Issue 17, Vol 10: 23 September 2013 In this issue:
Braaing the National Reconciliation...Charade? Braaing the National Reconciliation...Charade? By Buti Manamela There is a creeping insistence that our country should forget about its history, heritage and past as a precondition to social cohesion, nation building and restoration of equality, social justice and national unity. This is an unfair precondition. We do not use national commemoration days in order to remind those who were at the helm of the apartheid system how cruel they were, but to remind ourselves, collectively as a nation, that national, political and economic oppression in our country should never be repeated. This is the significance of national Heritage Day, which runs the risk of being collapsed into a National Braai Day. The culture of rolling out marinated boerewors on charcoal has become a national pastime. A culture made popular by Afrikaners when they host their guests has now become synonymous with our heritage day. In fact, as I write this piece, there is an event organized to make a world record of the biggest braai for the Guinness Book of records to be held in Mamelodi, the home of Solomon Mahlangu. Do not be confused, I love my braai, although it is the reason I lost my sixpack and put me in running battles with the Minister of Health. However, we painstakingly brush aside and push to the backburners real national reconciliation issues and hope that they will go up in the shisanyama smoke. Let me start with the event that irked me the most. I took my sisters-in-law to the Nelson Mandela games held in Soccer City in August. It was to be a day filled with festivities. I looked forward to the legend’s soccer match, and the game of the now-on-form Bafana Bafana playing Burkina Faso. The main event was the Springboks against Argentina. This was a competitive game as part of the Four Nations and therefore important for the nation to win, and they did make us proud. But what disturbed me was that during the soccer, the parking lot was full of my fellow countrymen of the fairer skin busy grilling their steak and chops on their portable braaistandswhilst Bafana Bafana was cheered to defeat by a mainly charcoal grandstand. Then Argentina and the Springboks blessed the traditionally soccer field, and like a miracle, the stadium was filled to capacity. The stadium suits were filled to capacity and our neighbours started complaining about our uncharacteristic cheering of the rugby team as they implored us to switch off the hip-hop bass courtesy of Khuli Chana from our inhouse DJ. This is the case when there are visiting English soccer teams in preseason matches where the fairer one’s supports Manchester United or Manchester City whilst their darkie (yes, you heard me, darkie) countrymen are behind Supersport United or Amazulu. I must hasten to say that this is not a generalization. But the fact that we still frown upon a whitey Kaiser Chiefs supporter as odd or regard a black person who supports the Democratic Alliance as the worst sell-outs shows how far still we have to go in reconciling our nation. There are a lot of people, including Winnie Mandela (allegedly) who profess that the leadership of Nelson Mandela went too far in compromising to favor the interests of the white nation during the negotiations at CODESA and World Trade Centre. Mandela gave them the Rand and the Land at those negotiations, but this remains debatable. However, the truth of the illustrations I made above shows that the historically oppressed have gone way too far to ensure that our nation remains stable and our democracy does not implode. This has been as a result of the leadership of the ANC and the alliance to ensure that, as was feared after Mandela’s release, that there will be a black on white violence. These fears have been resuscitated lately with Mandela’s deteriorating health not as a threat by black people towards whites, but as an expression of hidden white fears and suspicion that we have not buried the hatchet and will be willing to slit white throats as soon the president of the republic declares Mandela dead. This pretentious national reconciliation has given birth to demagoguery and populism of the types of post First World War Europe were Hitler and company capitalized on the slow economic prosperity in Germany and turned it into political capital. The so-called Economic Freedom Fighters have sought to capitalize on objective weaknesses in relation to the capacity of the state to rapidly change the quality of lives of black people into political capital for the forthcoming general elections. Of course South Africans are seeing through their political chauvinism and will not be willing to gamble the future of our country with these fellows at its helm. But the worst is the DA’s opportunism, which seeks to balance white fears with black anger, and have gone the mile to try and reassure white wealth and promise black prosperity. The distortion of the DA’s history by its election apparatchik falls squarely in this regard. But what should we do? How do we deal with this pretense of a social cohesion when the political, religious, economic and social leadership are fragmented into either advancing common prosperity or protecting apartheid accumulated wealth? How do we navigate through automatic opposition on issues such as land, minerals and economic ownership laws and policies that the ANC-led alliance introduce as a means to guarantee national stability, reconciliation and unity? The ANC should continue advancing its strategy and tactics of building a national democratic society based on political and economic liberation of blacks and Africans. The responsibility of leading national social cohesion beyond the pretentious symbols of sports, culture and heritage lies solely with the ANC-led alliance. This responsibility should not only be about fighting corruption, ending corporate greed and suppression of constitutional rights but should as its basis be about changing the economic base. If all our people can equitably share in the national braai, then we will be making progress. Otherwise, the rainbow nation will fade like a Cape Town summer. That’s the Bottomline, cos the YCL says so! Buti Manamela National Secretary of the YCL Sent from my iPad -- -- You are subscribed. This footer can help you. Please POST your comments to [email protected] or reply to this message. You can visit the group WEB SITE at http://groups.google.com/group/yclsa-eom-forum for different delivery options, pages, files and membership. To UNSUBSCRIBE, please email [email protected] . You don't have to put anything in the "Subject:" field. 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