Njabulo S Ndebele on racism indabas - from Steve Biko Memorial Lecture, Sept 2000. I confess to being one of those who have had an ambivalent attitude towards the recent national conference on racism. On the one hand, I welcomed the attention paid to this national problem of racism. On the other, I remain deeply worried about the terms on which the problem was highlighted and engaged. I am bothered by the phenomenon of a black majority in power, seeming to reduce itself to the status of complainants as if they had a limited capacity to do anything more significant about the situation at hand that drawing attention to it. It is not that the complaints have no foundation; on the contrary, the foundations are deeply embedded in our history. But I cannot shake off the feeling that the galvanising of concern around racism reflects a vulnerability, which could dangerously resuscitate a familiar psychology of inferiority precisely at that moment when the black majority ought to provide confident leadership through the government they have elected. I worry that the complaining may look confusingly like a psychological submission to ‘whiteness’ in the sense of handing over to ‘whiteness’ the power to provide relief. ‘Please, stop this thing!’ seems to be the appeal. ‘Respect us.’ I submit that we moved away from this position decisively on 27 April 1994. We cannot go back to it. It should not be so easy to give up a psychological advantage. I am bothered by the tendency that, when a black body is dragged down the road behind a bakkie, we see first proof of racism rather that depravity and murder. When we give racism in Africa this kind of centrality of explanation, we confirm the status of the black body as a mere item of data to be deployed in a grammar of political argument, rather than affirm it as a violated humanity. The inherent worth of a black body does not need to be affirmed by the mere proof of white racism against it. The black body is much more than the cruelty to which it is subjected. If we succeed in positioning ourselves as a people above this kind of cruelty, we deny it equality of status. We can then deal with it as one among many other problems in our society that needs our attention. (via Bongani Kona)
Posted on: Wed, 17 Dec 2014 22:28:59 +0000
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