Inasmuch as South Africa’s mainstream media offer worthwhile punditry particularly around the hot topic of race, it is, – I find – usually the reader comments that are most poignant. Coming as they do from everyday people, read them and it’s unequivocal: Ours remains a gravely divided nation of laagers and kraals; decrepitude, potholes and hypocritical socialists dooming us to a dystopia not too dissimilar to Zimbabwe.
A write-up around Julius Malema singing ‘Kill the Boer;’ was one such affair that had these frontline commentators drying the powder kegs on the pages of the Institute for Race Relations’ online publication, The Daily Friend, not so long ago. Though laced with some discomforting prose, for the most part, that article painstakingly endeavoured towards balance and insight, constantly rebuffing any ideas of a genocide. But as soon as the author, Andrew Kenny, pushed ‘send,’ he unwittingly opened up the floodgates to opinions that called for a strong stomach. Reading them, I thought to myself; Ah, I know these okes, know them well enough I could sniff them out purely based on their accents. For the sake of this article, though, let’s hear them out verbatim.
“Academic research,” one pontificates, “showing different races have different average IQs, with Africa not doing so well in the chart, is actually true, much as we realise it is politically incorrect and political suicide for anyone to say it out loud.” He goes on; “But black Africans are their own worst enemy. They make it so hard for us to counter the science and data. We want to. But we can’t” [my emphasis]. To this, another commented; LIBERALS ARE UNINTENTIONALLY BIGGER ENEMIES OF BLACKS, because they (sic) trying to equalize them with other races. It’s unfair and impossible” [their emphasis].
Thenceforth it was open season. Blackness was swiftly reduced to a race that nobody in the first world really cares about and should Malema’s pogroms ever get underway in earnest, at least a few of these okes were preemptively taking shooting lessons. Failing which, some also happen to carry dual citizenship and it’ll be a snowy day in February before the French or German governments or for that matter, Fox News, fold their arms as blonde-eyed teenagers are being hacked to death by irascible African savages. Makes for revealing reading, indeed.
The irony, however, is that Kenny’s article is premised on a book by Afriforum’s Ernst Roets highlighting savage incidents of farm murders and also how callous political rhetoric can often culminate in twisted bodies out on the street. Rather than appreciate the nuances, one of which – I presume – is that violence only begets violence, these okes morphed into Bittereinder types – the white man’s last defence should the war ever come. You may well recall that amongst Roets’ many claims to fame was an online video of himself firing a modified glock back in 2018; a soiree in the US preaching this ‘white genocide’ to every alt-right skinhead willing to listen, as well as tweeting a picture of the old South African flag just moments after the Equality Court ruled that the gratuitous display of the flag constituted hate speech.
In doing so, they played right into Malema’s hands. Look, I’m no fan of the man. In fact, even the choice of the song in question is much like a blundering kindergarten ditty in the enduringly rich oeuvre of Struggle-era compositions.
But its deliberate selection achieves precisely the outcome unfolding before us, ditto Malema’s signature soundbites – a lore. The barefoot kid from a gustblown village, raised on his grandmother’s social welfare, lived in a hovel, did badly at school…and yet. At every turn when he speaks, even a president not reputed to say much about the nation’s troubles, issues a press statement. When the enfant terrible calls for a national shutdown, big business is gripped in pandemonium. Alas, just by singing, he is hauled before court, yet unflinchingly tells those long-haired white lawyers that someday they will suffer ‘chest pains’ because he is destined for the presidency. It feeds into the Juju myth; the ultimate township rags to riches story.
If only the same could be said of some of the opinion pieces and attendant commentary. On the contrary, they simply feed into another commonly black South African narrative; that these okes just don’t get it. Kenny puts it to us that had a white person made a joke about a black genocide, Daily Maverick’s editor-at-large, Richard Poplak, as well as that publication’s contributor, Professor Pierre de Vos, would’ve called for his head. This is based on the fact that this duo decided against leaping onto the laager, choosing instead to send out a tasteless tweet that will likely see them chastised around the braai.
Why their stupidity or courage? Not sure, but will attempt a theory or two.
As a seasoned journalist, and unlike Kenny, Poplak’s job probably doesn’t allow him the privilege to ‘nearly’ make ‘wrong turn[s].'” Wrong turns are often the route to be taken when you want to get to the coalface. To Nyanga, Gugulethu or Eldorado Park; where the real, merciless slaying usually happens. Where guns pop off in broad daylight as gangs tussle it out and sometimes the situation gets so bad that even the police have to rely on private security companies for their own protection. In the ensuing abnormality, children as young as the slain Wilmien Potgieter (bless her innocent heart) are not only murdered, but are often the helpless victims of barbaric sexual violence. Entire families are assassinated, a pregnant woman hangs from a tree, another is burned alive – and that’s just those you read about. Now, hand those men whose eyes have seen these horrors the latest crime statistics whilst trying to convince them that the same is happening out on the farms and they might be forgiven for laughing in your face.
There is also the stench of a common white middle-class ailment here; the refusal to fess up to their own privilege. Whether Kenny is being sarcastic when referring to himself as a ‘low-class’ white only he knows. But what we can all agree on is – to paraphrase the Afrikaner writer, Rian Malan – that having enjoyed a good education and eventually emerging as an engineer, he would’ve been utterly stupid if he hadn’t benefited handsomely from Apartheid.
Between the low wages and political upheavals of the day, his darker compatriots weren’t so lucky. Common practice saw them flung to the worst schools, got the worst teachers and pretty much the worst of everything else. Not much has changed since, but given how this is mostly common knowledge, we’ll eschew the unnecessary history lesson. Still, one must wonder whether Kenny was really thinking when the only reason he could come up with for Poplak and de Vos’s controversial tweet is; “they believe that whites are fully developed adult human beings who can take a joke whereas blacks are helpless little children who can’t.” Ouch!
Not sure what to make of this except to conclude that there are a lot of paranoid whites who still just don’t get it. They react to the political spectacle yet don’t understand the real issues behind 100 000 people chanting a song that most of them don’t even really mean. Sure, there are historic and land issues that need to be addressed, but for many, it is simply a matter of getting on the bus to the stadium because there will be a plate of food waiting when you get there.
Poverty in these spaces is not just a sociological concept. It is real youths who will stab and kill you for a cellphone. It’s a woman who murders her four children because she can no longer feed them. Sounds way too simplified, I know, but for the most part, it is just a matter of everybody wanting a better quality of life and understanding that those who have nothing will likely turn on those who have when the tummies begin to grumble. Now should not be the time for insults and drawing comparisons, certainly not for stirring unnecessary panic. Instead it’s precisely the time for Mr Kenny & Co. to consider taking a wrong turn once in a while. But, if that should prove too daunting for an elderly white man, to at least consider putting himself in his fellowman’s shoes.
In so doing, he may well realise that not every darkie in a red t-shirt wants to slit his throat or occupy his house. Like most people anywhere, they too would like to die with a clean sheet – never having spilled any blood except that of the bovines they sometimes sacrifice to their ancestors. And by grasping this simple truth, he, as Poplak and de Vos have done, might be that much closer to “getting it.” Until then, we can all still agree that the song is in bad taste.