CIAO DATE: 05/02

Georgetown Journal of International Affairs

Volume 1, Number 1, Winter/Spring 2000

 

In Search of the Promised Land
by Hlumelo Biko

 

It seems strange that only ten years ago, various laws in South Africa forbade me from engaging in the most simple activities: strolling along Cape Town’s world famous beaches, shopping at certain malls, living in certain neighborhoods, and attending certain schools. I was viewed, by those kind enough to regard me as human, as a second–class citizen. Worse still, my experience was not unique, but shared among millions who suffered the atrocities of apartheid. Today, we have the freedom for which generations fought for years at a great expense; the liberation movement has delivered us to the “Promised Land.”

Current political discourse regarding South Africa focuses on the famous W.H.A.M. (“What Happens After Mandela?”) question. The African National Congress (ANC) has emerged as the governing party and must now undertake the formidable task of governing the Promised Land. The key to South Africa’s future is whether post–Mandela leadership will be able to eradicate the legacy of apartheid. Equally important is whether the ANC can overturn the legacies of the anti–apartheid movement, particularly the distrust many black South Africans feel toward the country’s political and legal institutions.

For those who believe that great personalities shape the course of history, Mandela is their champion. Mandela is one of those individuals that makes “great man historians” smile. His ability to confront and harmonize the system was legendary, and he will undoubtedly be considered one of the twentieth century’s great freedom fighters. Mandela sowed the seeds of democracy as one of the few African leaders (I can only recall Julius Nyerere in Tanzania) who peacefully relinquished power, while establishing a code of conduct for future South African leaders.

But Mandela would be the first to acknowledge that he is merely a personification of the South African struggle, and not the lone crusader as he is sometimes portrayed. To assume that Mandela’s struggle was more acute than everyone else’s would be a mischaracterization. It is easy for South Africans to identify with Mandela because most of us have been through pains of equal magnitude, albeit under different circumstances. Thabo Mbeki is South Africa’s future. What we have in the recently elected President Mbeki is a man who has made it his business to become South Africa’s “Mr. Delivery,” for he knows that reelection depends upon his ability to improve the quality of life for South Africans. Mbeki must face the aftermath of apartheid and liberation.

As a young and militant ANC member, Mbeki called for the youth and the black population at large to “make the townships ungovernable.” This was part of the ANC’s destabilization strategy, which worked in conjunction with other Liberation tactics such as sanctions and armed struggle. The impact of these strategies on the black South African mentality are debatable, but it is clear from looking at the lawlessness in contemporary townships that the combined effects of oppression and destabilization continue to permeate South African townships.

I lived in a Cape Town township called Gugulethu, on a street renowned for violent confrontations between the youth and the police. During apartheid, the law prohibited the gathering of a substantial number (as few as twenty) of individuals, unless approved by law enforcement officials. In those times, comrades of the struggle died almost every day, and their funerals were supported by thousands of other comrades who would sing songs of liberation while ushering their fallen comrade to his or her final resting place. The police would arrive, often shooting tear gas with little or no warning, and would then fire automatic weapons toward the mourners as a means of “crowd control.”

As a child, I remember the terror of seeing an army squad car looming ominously at the end of the road. Although I had done nothing wrong and the car was not even chasing me, the mere glimpse of it triggered my instinctive reaction to run, almost resulting in a fatal accident with another car. This is the nature of most township experiences. Perhaps some have more gruesome tales, but the underlying mentality is the same: The law is your enemy; avoid those who enforce the law, or suffer the consequences. It comes as little surprise that police are not seen as being there “to protect and to serve” the people in South African townships, but instead are viewed as an oppressive force.

How ironic, then, that the man given the task of mending this patchwork of unstable townships is Thabo Mbeki himself. Any stabilization measures Mbeki and the post–apartheid administration enact must focus on reducing crime in the society. Crime prevention, however, is troublesome in a country where people have traditionally mistrusted the legal system.

Economic disparities reinforce racial division. In Cape Town’s wealthiest areas, such as Seapoint and Camps Bay, Ferraris and Porsches line the streets. But sadly, after a fifteen–minute northwesterly drive, one arrives in one of the many ungovernable townships in South Africa, where gang violence, drugs, and malnutrition are prevalent.

Although apartheid has been abolished, residual consequences manifest themselves daily. Most of the faces in those Ferraris and Porsches are white faces, and all of the faces in the poor townships are black faces. Thus, one can legitimately inquire as to whether much has changed in South Africa. The obvious response is that now blacks have the freedom to live this extravagant lifestyle. But this freedom can yield little when most black South Africans remain mired in poverty. White South Africans benefited so much from apartheid economically that it is difficult–if at all possible–for the rest of the population to catch up.

But an even greater danger looms on the not–so–distant horizon: the rising black elite further marginalizing the rest of the population in the name of “black empowerment.” This is a group characterized by politicians–turned–businessmen, exiled citizens who have returned with superior qualifications, and the lucky few who were able to prosper under the apartheid regime because of personal attributes of one kind or another. At face value there is nothing wrong with this new class. But further analysis shows some fundamentally self–defeating characteristics in such empowerment.

In South Africa, a majority of the population was discriminated against by a minority purely on the basis of race. In post–apartheid South Africa, the previously marginalized majority must be empowered, even if sometimes at the expense of the privileged minority. Government and small– to medium–sized black empowerment groups have been charged with this task. The few that do prosper from these empowerment schemes accumulate a disproportionate amount of wealth. And because the new elites now have more to lose, the temptation to hinder the redistribution of wealth is great. It is encouraging that President Mbeki has waged a personal war on poverty, crime, and corruption. What remains to be seen is how his government will react to his calls and how they will carry out his mandate.

These are the challenges that face the governors of this Promised Land. For all of the strides that we have taken as a country, many more remain. Recently, on a flight to Johannesburg, I sat next to a child and his mother. In the course of our discussion, I discovered that this white South African family was planning to permanently leave the country and relocate to the United States. This struck me as particularly disturbing: that a mother could uproot her child from school at the age of thirteen and face an uncertain existence in the United States rather than endure the growing pains of their mother country.

This sentiment has been echoed elsewhere. Last year, The Mail and Guardian, a weekly newspaper in South Africa, quoted some black kids from Soweto as saying that they would “rather have a white president, because they felt that whites are smarter and more honest than blacks, and would thus be able to do a better job of running the country than a black president would.” The comments of these children are ironic, considering that Soweto is the Johannesburg township famous for the student uprisings in 1976 that arguably represented the climactic moment of the Black Consciousness movement. Their comments also reflect a deeply ingrained racism. Apartheid has succeeded in convincing many in South Africa that blacks are an inherently inferior race. Much will have to be done by the educational system to rescue children from buying into the old myths and perpetuating them through under–performance.

Regardless of race, the fears that we face about the future of South Africa are real. Yet it is a sign of closed–mindedness when a society believes that a transfer of power from a white racist government to a more democratic and proportionally representative government will endanger the future of its citizens. Such a shift in public opinion is a result of a lack of positive examples of good governance in Africa. South Africa has a prime opportunity to become one such example.

Good governance, however, does not mean a suppression of certain historical truths. The swiftness with which the wrongs of the last two decades were swept under the carpet has resulted in South Africa’s prematurely reaching what is, in essence, a false sense of reconciliation. It will be critical for the nation–building strategy to include new history curricula geared at informing children about the true history of the country, regardless of how uncomfortable it is for them to learn it. Only through strong leadership and honest education will South Africa truly become the Promised Land.