Foreign nationals would’ve breathed a sigh of relief that the vigilante-like group Operation Dudula’s political hopes sank like lead towards the 2024 general election. But thanks to Patriotic Alliance leader, Gayton McKenzie, such relief has been shortlived. Kept out of the home affairs ministry where he’d hoped to drive his ‘#Abahambe’ rallying cry home, as Minister of Sports Arts and Culture he seems intent on training his crosshairs on anyone who might help him prove just how ernstig he is about migrants who’ve overstayed their welcome.
Chidimma Adetshina finds herself his first casualty.
The Miss SA pageant hopeful, whose father is reportedly Nigerian and whose mother is described as a South African ‘with Mozambican roots’, has gone from just another beautiful contestant to ‘a social media storm’ courtesy of Mckenzie’s stonewalling. What had started out as a benign online exchange between a ‘troll’ – a certain Chris Excel – who’d asked Mckenzie on how he felt about Adetshina’s participation in the competition got tongues wagging, ultimately letting loose South Africa’s smallanyana skeletons – race, ethnicity and all the attendant constructs.
Not one to mince his words, McKenzie wasted no time in castigating her as a ‘Nigerian’ whose case gave him ‘funny vibes’ and has since instituted a probe into her eligibility. As a result, social media has been at it, questioning everything from why she only speaks English, to why she sports flags that aren’t of the country on her social media profiles.
The aftermath has seen Tendai Mtawarira, the retired Zimbabwe-born Springbok forward being dragged into the controversy. If Mtawarira was allowed to wear the national rugby jersey, some posited, what’s the fuss with Adetshina being crowned Miss SA? Memories, however, are clearly a little fuzzy. Mtawarira faced similar – both political as well as in the brutal court of public opinion – hurdles in his early career. Olympic gold medalist Tatjana Smith’s citizenship has also suddenly come into sharp focus. Celebrities have weighed in. Legal gurus, including former Public Protector, Thuli Madonsela, have had their say. A now-defunct online petition rallying for Adetshina’s removal from the competition reportedly had some 3000 signatures before it was taken down. In record time, the mudslinging has deteriorated into guttural xenophobia and race-baiting – issues to which views tend to be as disparate as the colours of the so-called Rainbow Nation.
Although – given its complexity and the attendant historical implications – most people would prefer not to get bogged down on race, the reality is that it remains a persistent leitmotif in SA’s social fabric – popping up every so often even as some pretend it’s not even there. The everyday SA lived reality is constructed around it. Infact, in its absence, our politics would be so vastly changed as to be unrecognizable. In its formation, the government of national unity (GNU) had to painstakingly configure itself around persistent racial stumbling blocks and perceptions.
Not at all unexpected if one considers the inherent workings of our political spectrum. Liberals (DA) would have us believe that it’s a non-starter; apartheid ended 30 years ago, so can’t we please just forget about the past and move on? Leftists, both on the extreme (EFF, MKP, PAC) and moderate (the entirety of the black union movement) fashion their rhetoric in all manner of redress and transformation, ostensibly for the benefit of the previously-disadvantaged. Conservatives (FF+) prioritise minorities (read: white Afrikaner interests). The PA openly advocates to have the ‘Coloured agenda’ on the table. And so the list goes on; different racial groups, but a common driver: race. And an attitude of kraals and laagers – ‘us’ versus ‘them.’
The by-product of this then is how issues that ought to be a naturally collective/national concern lend themselves to sectarian racialising. Crime finds itself given a face, almost always black or brown. Farm murders are touted as a pointed attack on whites. Inevitably this sends certain groups into panic mode, disseminating the threat of, let’s say, a ‘white genocide’ which resulted in then-President Donald Trump’s and Elon Musk’s knee-jerk tweets back in 2018.
The unfortunate part of this is how it seems to create a hierarchy of importance on human life, this whilst obviating the real and present dangers that dog the nation. Is the former US President aware that ‘White and Indian homicide rates are lower than both the coloured and black rates?’ Does he know that in some areas like the Cape Flats near Cape Town or Diepsloot in Johannesburg, people are killed like flies and even the police often find themselves outgunned and too spooked to enter these hotspots? The one who still cherishes the dream of a nonracial country might be mortified by the comparisons, but major news houses appear fascinated by them. These stories have made for elaborate long-form features and documentaries across various prestigious media.
Seemingly the world nurses a peculiar interest in this – a country with one of the world’s highest murder rates outside a war zone – but one wonders what this messaging bears for the national image except to portray a country at war with itself. Earlier this year we published an article of a BBC documentary on the life and times of Operation Dudula. The Soweto-based-organisation-turned-political-party has styled itself as that township’s last defence against foreign migrants – purportedly the root of all that is foul and degenerate in the country. What the cameras ultimately show are black people intimidating, harassing and essentially on the warpath against other black people.
A more recent BBC Africa Eye documentary entitled Crime and Punishment in South Africa pounds on a similar note. Gatvol with rampant crime, white farmers in Brits near Pretoria and under the banner of the lobby group Afriforum have rallied together to form patrol parties. Armed with hi-tech security gear, they prowl the night intent on combating the crime affecting the area. In Diepsloot, a township outside of Johannesburg and armed with reflector jackets and the odd sjambok, black residents take to the same task (see below).
What follows next is something skirting on vigilantism and racial paranoia. Reading between the lines, it becomes obvious that were the BBC cameras not there, it would’ve been easy for the patrollers to cross the line. To show the suspected criminals who exactly was in charge. The video is replete with difficult racial undertones and micro aggressions. Reading the comments on the video, however, one was rather startled. Surprised. Maybe even a little proud.
Expecting to read the sort of crass stupidity one would anticipate from an Adam Catzavelos vacation video, the majority of responders seemed wedded to a Musketeer sort of koan. Gone were the ad hominens. So too the black versus white vs Indian vs Zulu vs Shangaan… For a change social media sounded agreeable to the notion of ‘all for one’.
Unlike the barbarism that flooded the Adetshina debate, this was welcome respite. These uncharacteristically somber-minded YouTubers weren’t pointing fingers at their fellow man but at a government that in so many ways has failed everybody, the poor the most. For those who understand that the ‘race’ issue is as embedded in our nation’s DNA as Cornish pies or pap or Die Stem, will appreciate that amongst us surprisingly still breathe those who still believe that Simply Red were onto something: We’re in this together!
If the white farmer dies, where will the nation get their three daily squares? When there are black kids who grow up in impoverished slums with little resources to dig themselves out, then where do they turn but likely towards all manner of self-destructive behaviour, crime being a very lucrative turn-to? But mostly we learn that whether the government is black or white, if it forgets why people put it there in the first place, then we are what those under-resourced Diepsloot patrolers promise to those criminals they hunt. We’re f****d.