Apartheid was a winner!

Attention-seeking headline - or fact? It may be shocking but I believe it’s true. One avowed intention was the suppression or destruction of black South African culture. It succeeded. Even President Mbeki, recently addressing the National House of Traditional Leaders, appears to agree.

I’ve been writing about it for years and having abuse heaped on my head as a result, for the same period. My statement has been: Ubuntu is dead. That much-vaunted African Humanism, which nurtured gems like: ‘No African child will be an orphan so long as one African woman lives.’ Or: ‘It takes a village to raise a child.’ ‘I am a person only because you are a person’ etc. etc.

Both the late Dr. Kalushi Drake Koka (the revered Ntate Koka) and Jon Qwelane of Talk Radio 702 fame could and did give riveting accounts of ancestral wisdom and custom in South African black cultures. I sat in awe listening to how successfully criminal rehabilitation (as just one example) was dealt with according to tradition and custom. Having experienced the hospitality and generosity of incredibly poor black people in Kliptown when I was a missionary preacher there in the 1960s, I saw it in operation with my own eyes.

Last year I lost a significant contract from an African entity because I wrote that:

1) Black AIDS orphans were being ostracised by their neighbours – who by the way know bloody well that they can’t get AIDS by casual association.

2) That baby rapes and child abuse in African society are at a proven all-time high.

3) That other than in selected rural areas where a smidgen of custom stills clings tenuously to life, you will no longer, by and large, experience much community sharing, empathy, care-giving or support.

Those attributes have been subsumed to the new IMM cultural phenomenon. I, Me and Mine. And it’s not just young people who are guilty. Many age groups have climbed on the band wagon as the maxim ‘every man for himself and God for us all’ has kicked into big-time play.

Of course people will protest, the race card will be played and my credentials or audacity to write or comment on such issues will be attacked. But in recent media, President Mbeki himself is finally acknowledging that Ubuntu ain’t wot it used to be, or what it ought to be. On the very same page of 5^th May, as the Star newspaper article featuring the Prez’s comments to this effect is a picture of Mbhazima Shilowa, our Gauteng Premier. Dressed in clashing but clearly expensive designer duds, the former communist trade union leader is smiling broadly at having just launched an own-blend wine. Let’s not use Mr. Shilowa as the solitary example but rather as the metaphor for a particular new South African leadership mind-set.

Journalist Len Maseko in his Sowetan newspaper article commenting on the launch had this to say: ‘At R250 a bottle, the premier and his friends are looking beyond the marginalised masses for their target market. They have forgone their liberation sensibilities while embracing their new wealthy lifestyles.’

There are way too may former ‘struggle’ heroes and adherents who these days seem to perpetuate the struggle only insofar as further feathering their already very comfy nests is concerned. It’s as though any cultural imperative to alleviate, ameliorate or eliminate the suffering of in particular, women and children in our country is no longer their obligation or responsibility.

The hypocrisy for me is this: If you were indeed struggling for egalitarianism and the ‘liberation’ of your own people – where has that fine ideal gone? Where is the concept of ‘I am my brother’s keeper’? Where is the ethic of ensuring that what little there is will be shared with everyone? Even if it does mean that all involved remain a little hungry as a result of the process.

I am left saddened that Ubuntu’s demise now has even the Presidential seal of recognition on it. Further, does it mean that the ‘Ubuntu’ we saw in the 60s and onwards was in fact nothing more that a bonding together of similarly afflicted people? That it was a collusion of convenience? And now that the common enemy has been vanquished, the underlying amoral, self-serving behavioural patterns have simply assumed their appropriate priority?

The old architects of Apartheid must be chuckling in their graves. Their system did what thousands of years of natural evolution might not have done. It killed cultures and turned a people back into a financially and materially predatorial species – prepared to ignore the needs of their own poor and weak.

Am I celebrating the success of Apartheid in cultural destruction? No. I’m instead mourning the lack of leadership that has allowed it to run its full course. That is not a happy prognosis for the future of South Africa.

Additional thoughts, added 20th May 2006. This is Ubuntu?

1) In South Africa, black people invented 'necklacing' - hanging a car tyre filled with petrol around the neck of someone and lighting it - horribly burning them to death in the process.

2) In the current security guard strike in South Africa, we have people being stripped naked and flung from moving trains - to certain death or dreadful mutilation.

3) We have an on-going litany of politicians and government officials creaming off money intended in some cases for school feeding schemes in desperately disadvantaged rural areas.

4) There is an epidemic of HIV + males raping babies or young virgins in the distorted misconception that in so doing they will rid themselves of the virus.

Update 14th June 2006:

A South African Human Rights Commission (HRC) report released yesterday, a result of public hearings by the Commission across the country, tells of school pupils being forced to have sex with teachers as a 'disciplinary' measure when arriving late for school or even, in some cases, for food. Economically disadvantaged students were at particular risk.

Comments

[Remedy Maker]

That was a very good take on the current situation. If we accept the premise of the article how can we remedy the situation?

[Clive Simpkins]

My belief is that if a critical mass of spiritually aware leaders were to start walking the right talk, there could be a shift, if not a cultural renaissance. This sad situation is not unique to Africa. Native Americans, Australian Aboriginals, New Zealand Maoris and other indigenous peoples have gone the same way through colonialism and misdirected 'religious' as opposed to spiritual missionary work. OK: so that's the Simpkins shake and bake recipe. I hope that some sort of awakening will also come via young people, unencumbered with past baggage, who will hack a new pathway through the amoral jungle.

[Gericke Potgieter]

There are many ways to view history, and especially the case of Apartheid. This particular article reminds me of the importance of context - something that seems amiss when Mr Simpkins discusses the issue. Reality is that Apartheid was an aborted process that sprung back to its initial (and rather sick) origins of British Emperialism. We often talk about it as if it was this evil plan devised by the master demon himself when alas it was something entirely different.

Whether or not Apartheid is understood is besides the point though. I agree that South Africa is experiencing mass chaos on cultural level. Where culture fails, so will morality.

I regard this as a good thing - not nice to see, but good that the process is taking its full course. One cannot build a new house if an old one is in your way after all.

The only solution, as was the case since the beginning of the universe, is that very precious characteristic of the Almighty namely healthy, balanced relationships. By building these, not for the sake or purpose of "converting", "changing" or "fixing" people, but rather for the sake of getting to love, know and understand them will allow us to grow together and heal. One friend at a time.