A RESPONSE TO GILLIAN SCHUTTE'S 'MANDELA DAY'

A RESPONSE TO GILLIAN SCHUTTE'S 'MANDELA DAY'

I find Ms Schutte's article confused and confusing.

True, Mandela has been subjected to hagiography and reinvention. All important historical figures worldwide suffer in this way. Gandhi, Kennedy, Martin Luther King are all examples. Some do well out of it and some not. None of them will escape criticism forever or keep their reputations intact.

Time and historical research will rebalance and reassess Mandela's contribution and there will always be arguments about his value. That's good. Remember too, that Mandela was turned into a brand and a money-making legacy on his death bed. He was denied dignity as his life ended so others could make political capital from him and this was done by his immediate family and by senior politicians, none of whom were white. This behaviour may be reprehensible but it is also human. Human behaviour is human behaviour – not white or black behaviour.

It is true that black leaders throughout post -colonial Africa have been given an unjustifiably bad press from the West. Nevertheless leaders will always be criticised and deserve to be criticised because they will all inevitably make mistakes and sometimes prove corruptible. Mandela and Gandhi included. What is needed is for people to be well-informed and not leap to defend or decry any leader because of the colour of his skin or his culture or traditions or religion. Leaders ought to be judged by the egalitarian way they fulfil the constitution of their country.

Ms Schutte's anger is directed against rich privileged whites and neocolonialism. Justifiable? Useful? Relevant to the South African situation? One might ask how helpful is her polemic in effecting change for the better for those she advocates for – the poor black folk who lack agency. After all there is a new colonial power searching for mines and farms in Africa. It's emissaries are relatively poor Chinese workers. Everything will change.

Ms Schutte talks about the 'dominant discourse' but what does she mean exactly? I take it, and I apologise if I am wrong,that she means to identify those who hold power and have control of society but she uses this term rather broadly. Is she talking about the global dominant discourse or specifically the dominant discourse in South Africa? They should not be conflated even where they impact on each other.

Ms Schutte quotes Richard Dyer's book 'White'. I haven't read it but it sounds interesting. He is talking she says, about the construction of Western imperialism in the 18^th and 19^th centuries which was undeniably built upon racism and the slave trade. Does his analysis fit today's situation as well?

Global power and wealth has changed and is concentrated in a few giant corporations who are controlled by a small number of individuals. This may be disturbing and frightening but how white is this concentrated power and is the selection of the powerful based on race and wealth or just wealth? In the present mix of global power are there not also people from the Middle East, the Far East, Russia, China and Latin America? If there is one dominant group its not static but changing all the time especially with regard to race and culture.

Power today may in fact be 'colour-blind'. I wonder if Ms Schutte isn't directing her energy at a moving and changing target and doing her cause far more harm than good by indicting 'whiteness' as if it is the main and only cause? According to Dyer 'whiteness' is not located inside the physical body and therefore can be an attribute of people whose skins aren't white. Schutte though, returns to the surface colour of people to make her point. She is rather selective with facts and analysis which weakens the validity of her argument.

The dominant power/discourse today probably doesn't care about race or the colour of anybody's skin. It may also be unconcerned if ordinary folk regardless of their colour, hate and kill each other because they are black against white, Sunni against Shiite, Catholic against Protestant, fundamentalist against free-thinker. By identifying the enemy primarily as white Schutte could be unintentionally arming racism and racists and losing potential allies because they have white skins.

I have seen very unpleasant examples of extreme white racism among some white Africans but isn't this a small group who are noisily vociferous when provoked? Attacking this group might make them implode in fury damaging the innocent when they do. Better to take the oxygen of angry attention away from them. My guess is that most whites are ashamed of apartheid and racism but if they are made to feel guilty about it they will become reluctant to adapt. That's human too. Learning how to live together can't be done through blame and humiliation. That was how apartheid managed and enforced separation.

Racism is not exclusive to pale people in any case. All people were damaged by apartheid. Racism, nationalism, chauvinism and tribalism start from the personal and they have to be understood and defeated there. People of all gradations of colour need to do this. Providing education and information gives the power to ordinary people to make up their own minds and change their own prejudices. I doubt that Ms Schutte's tactic of haranguing one group of South Africans in her article entitled 'Dear White People' was effective in changing attitudes. Those who approved of it were already in agreement. To change the minds of people you have to first show them respect even when you disagree with them. Mandela understood that.

At the moment there may be more well-off white people in South Africa hanging on to any vestiges of privilege they can than there are well-off black people who feel threatened by the poverty around them. Its possible that both groups might together form a new South African elite that disregards the poor. How do you change that for the better? Not by reducing people to their surface colour but by understanding their fears and their aspirations.

Can the case for change be made without referring to skin colour?

I believe it needs to be.

http://www.thoughtleader.co.za/gillianschutte/2014/07/18/mandela-day-a-postcolonial-exercise-in-the-commodification-of-the-good-black/
I am posting the link to Ms Schutte's article for information