Centre for Law and Social Justice
ON RACE, RACISM AND ESKOM
A letter on Race, Racism and Eskom to Anthony Harding and Ramolope Norman Makhutle
Dear Tony and Ramolope
Innumerable incidents involving race and racism are experienced in our country on a daily basis. I want to relate to one particular personal experience.
A couple of months ago, I was in a customer service queue at a Standard Bank branch in a small rural town in the Western Cape. Two very poor Afrikaans Coloured people (a woman and young man) were behind me and a white Afrikaans man joined us. The customer service assistant was a very friendly Afrikaans-speaking white woman. I asked her if there was a bookshop in the area when she started serving me. She did not know of any bookshops in the area. The white man explained that the neighbouring town had a good second-hand bookshop.
The assistant went to speak to the manageress, then returned and asked me to wait while they sorted out my account. Then, she literally looked-over the Coloured woman and young man and served the white man. I looked at the Coloured people who shook their heads in resignation when I looked at them shocked. I said politely: “Jammer, maar hierdie kliente was eerste in hierdie tou.” (Excuse me, these customers were first in the queue.) “Ag nee”, she said, “hulle het mos tyd.” (Oh no. They have time.) I asked her to call the manageress immediately and protested the racism. The white man and woman angrily ignored me and I blocked the area till they apologised and served the Coloured people. As a middle-class Afrikaans Coloured person from the City enquiring about books, I was acceptable to the club.
This incident demonstrates the superior and high-handed conduct of middle-class service workers across the industry, especially in banking and upmarket stores towards working-class and poor African, Coloured, Indian and White people.
I tell this story not to imply that all Afrikaans-speaking people are racists. Instead, I want to illustrate the web of patriarchal attitudes towards Coloured people in the rural areas reinforced in commerce at the highst levels. The silent acceptance of this regime by Coloured people is also a factor that must be adressed.
Let me start of by saying that every one of us carries prejudices of the past and present in every aspect of our daily lives. These prejudices include sexism, homophobia, xenophobia and all forms of racism.
I acknowledge without reservation that many of us, African, Coloured, Indian and White struggle against the odds to confront our personal prejudices. Some go further to engage in anti-racist and social justice movements.
I also unequivocally support affirmative action on the grounds of inequality including race, class, gender and disability. The intellectual dispossession of Black (African, Coloured and Indian ) people, then and now, requires a recognition that we have equal potential to be competent, efficient and effective. The equal potential has regrettably been equated with equal competence. There is a fear among us as Black people to recognise our lack of competence because many white people misconstrue it as “natural” stupidity from a racist point of view – this must be openly addressed without accusation. On the other hand many white people fear affirmative action because they have never faced competition from Black people in the open market.
I have no qualms in saying that it is unjust to provide a bursary to a private school educated Black child but not a poor or lower middle-class White child. Both deserve a bursary from the state. One for past injustice and the other for present class inequality.
I have no doubt that many middle-class or even bourgeois Black people are confronted with racism and its dehumanising impact, but we have the class position from which to resist racism as individuals. A poor Black worker finds it almost impossible to say to an employer: “I will sue you for racial (or any other) prejudice.”
The above statements should clarify my position on the usual race discussions – “we are not all the same” “middle-class balck people also suffer the indignities of race”, or “affirmative action is unjust”.
ESKOM, MAROGA AND THE CLASS POSITION OF BLACK EXECUTIVES
Race and racism in South Africa as elsewhere is complex and we do not speak of it openly except in times of national crisis. Such is the case with Eskom, Armscor, SAA and other areas of management failure in the state. Eskom in particular is central to the lives of everyone in South Africa and many others in a number of Southern African states.
The racial and ethnic background of Eskom’s incompetent and arrogant former CEO may be a factor in his perfomance and resignation as you suggest in your response on FaceBook. However, his dominant identity is one located among the black upper classes. Jacob Maroga is also part of a dominant strata of black executives in state enterprises and the public service. Catherine St. Jude Pretorius, a young Coloured woman and friend from a working class Cape Flats family wrote: “I agree, the constant irrelevant use of “racism” as a defence makes it difficult for us to confront REAL racism”.
You asked a fair and important question: “Ms. Pretorius what is ” REAL” racism?”. Then, you raised the important questions of inter-personal relations in the psychology and perceptions of people black and white. Is this only a part of the picture? I will try to venture an answer from another perspective. This is a perspective of class and economic interests in relation to race and racism.
RACISM, CLASS AND THE PRIVATE SECTOR
Racism in our country is constructed daily through class and gender inequality, and perpetuated by local and global corporations and the state.
For example, workers in the mining, textile, construction and other industries struggle for survival as anonymous and invisible Black – African, Coloured and Indian cheap labour. This survival is inhabited by hunger, the stench of sewage, illness, fear of criminals, alcoholism, transactional sex and many more injustices that working class and poor African and Coloured people encounter as a “fact” of life. In this sense, the mining and other industries that sustain South Africa’s exports on the global market also perpetuate the indignity of Black workers.
The drive towards slave wages by global corporations using workers from China and Bangladesh to Colombia and Lesotho reinforces not only a class apartheid but a structural racial division and contempt.
The racial contempt in the service industry against Black African and Coloured people by their employers is manifested in low-pay, terrible conditions of service and daily humiliation. Despite high profits, the tourism and service indsutry forces Khayelitsha and Bishop Lavis to serve the City of Cape Town while its people live in squalid and abject conditions. Of course, there are young white workers especially in restaurants who also face the burden of low wages and management by terror. However, they do not face racial the humiliation everpresent (either in the perception or reality) in the master-servant relationship of the service industry.
White, Indian and Coloured customers regularly display a racist impatience against over-worked and low paid workers across the service industry, from restaurants to banks. Coloured workers in supermarkets serve in dejection as their race and class inequality make them invisible (at best) or objects of contempt to middle-class people of all races.
Decent qualitative and quantitative studies on racism in the private sector must still be done, but anyone who critically reflects on these questions will find it hard to come to a different conclusion.
RACISM AND THE STATE
The post-apartheid state unintentionally relegated the majority of people – predominantly working class and poor, urban and rural Black people – to second-class citizenship. The education that a township child receives is unequal and maintains racial inferiority. Argued differently, the unuequal distribution of public services and goods such as education, health, housing, land use and sanitation reinforce racial inferiority . The primary users of public services and goods are working class and poor African, Coloured and to a very limited extent Indian and White people.
The state imparts racism in the daily humiliation faced by people in housing, education and health. No-one can argue that the government (as opposed to the state) intends to perpetuate and reinforce racism. It is the social and economic choices and constraints faced, and made, by the government and implemented by the state that constitutes structural racism.
The public service has been dramatically transformed in its racial compostion, and to a significant extent in its gender composition. A powerful white dominated civil service was restructured to a public service where management at all levels is Black. However, it is Black people that have suffered the consequences of its incompetence, laziness and corruption most of all. White people do not intrude in the civil service except as the material ghosts of the past. The Constitution demands a non-racial state and professional, open, accountable, ethical and effective public service. The restructuring of the entire state apparatus has failed non-racialism. Instead, the state is Africanised and promoted former homeland bureaucrats because they are Balck. In its service provision, the state discriminates against poor and working Black (predominantly African and Coloured) people.
Race and racism is not addressed except in cases of middle-class promotion, competence and demand for access to resources. The only form of racism against poor and working people that enters public discourse is hate crimes against black people. Structural racism perpetuated by big business and the state never enters our conversation. Race is contested by middle-classes black and white in their attempts to gain and entrench privilege and inequality.
I am arguing dominant trends. There are individuals of all races and all classes from big business to the poorest communities who resist racism on a daily basis This fact should not obscure what you correctly call the personal relations and inter-relations of domination and subordination we all experience. These relations are built on the fears and prejudices everyone imbibed from our ancestors, and their roles in conquest (in the pre-colonial as well as colonial periods), apartheid and “rainbow” racism.
Barbara Hogan condemned the racism used by Maroga and his supporters as a defence to obscure the fundamental problems withinEskom. Maroga is gone because of an arrogant incompetence supported by the class interest of upper-class people of colour..She is also correct that he is not the only one to blame for the Eskom debacle. Our short memories have erased the racial nationalism and arrogance of Mbeki ministers of Public Enterprises including that of the late Stella Sigcau and Alec Erwin.
A non-racial society must be built on the foundations of social justice, freedom and equality for all. This requires all of us to struggle for the rights enshrined in our constitution including:
- An equal, quality education system that restores dignity to every person.
- An efficient, effective, equitable and quality health service for all.
- Clean water, sanitation, street lights and decent housing.
- Safe and secure streets, homes, playgrounds, schools and communities with a prioritisation of gender-based understanding of the right to freedom of the person and her psychological and bodily integrity.
- Local and SADC regional public and private investment on the scale of the post-war Marshall Plan
- Global trade, investment, finance, agriculture and other agreements that establish a local global minimum wage, working conditions, environmental codes that are enforced.
- A movement for social and political integration among people to end hate crimes on the basis of race, homelessness, sexual orientation, Jewish, Muslim, immigration identities.
- The recognition by each of us that when we look a person in the eyes to greet we recognise their humanity. This is the most important and difficult of all the above tasks for citizens locally and globally.
Regards
Zackie Achmat (Centre for Law and Social Justice)
FACEBOOK COMMENTS
Anthony Harding to Sid Luckett
I am not a fan of blackouts and lack of clarity on the national strategy to face a social and economic crisis. (I have looked at the issue for some time, and also agree with Barbara Hogan speaking in parliament yesterday that it cannot be dumped at the door of one person, Maroga.)
I must assume that you have not understood … Read More my writing on this in my text on ‘Lekgoa.’ The ‘Lekgoa’ book is all about context, based on my training and experience using complex tools of social analysis in various social contexts, as well as understanding of the pre-conscious functioning of the limbic (emotional) system of the brain. Context is not just about material, objective context, and this is at the heart of the concept of ideology. ‘The past is not dead. The past is not even the past.’
I am looking at the content of Maroga’s response (not necessarily to validate it completely), because it reflects a view of whiteness that is not just his own perception, but is part of deep social discourse in black communities, and is expressed very clearly, particularly in the Sotho language group/ culture/ polity (Sepedi) that Maroga comes from. Denial does not address the problem that the behaviour which characterises whiteness is self-evident to others, and is unresolved. I think it is disingenious to respond superficially to this.
It is pity that some concerns about racism at Eskom were never addressed, instead the minister crticised those that sounded an alarm bell.
For as long as these issues including competency and support are tackled, we will walk this path again.
Eskom has attracted attention because of perhaps 2010 and the threat of blackouts, but recent history tells us that quick fix solutions have instead become long drawn and the process of repalcement and support staff is not an easy process…. Read More
At this particular point the focus is on so-called public entreprises, it is common knwldge that the private sector has
been bleeding jobs and runs to the state to extract conccessions by dangling a carrot to the ruling class.
General Nyanda for example wants to transform the cellphone industry and the CEO’s are whinning. It must be remembered that these companies were formed and accelerate in growth at the expense of you and me.
If we want state enterprises to be profitable and sustainable, what price are we willing to pay? Transformation of big headed boards that think they are an end all know all.
The self-same chairman has precided over the Eskom board and Maroga for the past two years. You cannot tell me they have not discussed plans to pull South Africa out of the abyss particularly at the time when the power was going on and off.
The leadership crisis is more than meets the eye. Particularly that some political parties have an unpunished access to confidential information that sometimes is not even finalised.
What has changed is that there are no longer prolonged load shedds, but the danger is still emminent.
One way or the other the public is till going to pay for any solution.
If I did not know better I would say corporate African leadership is in crisis.
Mon at 6:38pm ·
Thanks to Gavin Silber for grammar and style edits. The opinions are all mine and I hope that they open a discussion that is productive.
ENDS
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about 9 months ago
‘WHITENESS’ AND ‘BLACKNESS’
“…when I talk about white I mean ‘whiteness’, the construct, the ideology, the idea, the cultural space, not people who are white phenotypically.” Nomalanga Mkhize, Facebook discussion on Disgrace by JM Coetzee.
In South Africa many whites know that they are called lekgoa (plural makgoa), or by other common terms used in indigenous languages to describe whites, such as mlungu (plural abelungu). Children shout out spontaneously “lekgoa!” (more accurately “lekgooooa!”) when any white person arrives in a township or village, and sometimes run away in fear.
This was my experience on arriving at Ramatlhabama, in the Western parts of South Africa, and later in Jane Furse, in the North-Eastern parts of the country where the so-called Sotho languages are widely spoken. These languages include the various dialects of Setswana and Sepedi, which I heard daily.
In areas where the Sotho languages are spoken, lekgoa is a normal term for ‘white people.’ I started trying to understand the deeper meaning of the word while working in Jane Furse, and have been helped to understand the use of the word by friends with academic knowledge of the Sotho languages.
Although the term lekgoa is now used by black youth to describe ‘whiteness’ without any real sense of its deeper origins, its meaning is very clear to the older generation which experienced the ravages of legislated racial domination and dispossession.
Let’s be technical and look at what language specialists call the root of the word. Lekgoa derives from the (Sesotho, Sepedi and Setswana) root verb ‘(go) kgoa’. The dictionary meaning of the verb is given as ‘to tease, provoke, challenge.’
In popular use, however, the verb ‘(go) kgoa’ is used in the sense of ‘to lack decorum, to be rude, to be an embarrassment (or a person who embarrasses you), to be annoying, to be disrespectful, to have no regard for other people, to have no shame’.
The word lekgoa denotes a person who is ‘disrespectful’ towards another person. The English language talks of ‘defamation of character,’ and this is sometimes given as a further explanation of the word.
Of course, it is not quite as simple as that and social codes indicate that the term is used not only to refer to people with white skins, but to indicate general displeasure at certain forms of behaviour which are perceived to characterise whites.
In other contexts the word is used to indicate pleasure at the absence of certain forms of behaviour in a white person, such as when a respectful relationship has been formed between strangers. A comment could be made such as “o tseba go hlompa,” that is “he/she shows respect (for me as a person),” which means “you do not behave like lekgoa.”
Also, it is common in conversation to say “ga se lekgoa, ke motho” to indicate that someone else under discussion is not a white person, but a human being. The word motho (plural batho) is used generally to describe blacks.
There is no way of avoiding the conclusion that the term lekgoa is used in many social contexts to describe behavioural patterns associated with whites which show ‘lack of respect (for other human beings).’
What does this all mean – and can the term lekgoa be defined as a contemporary racial slur? The answer, I think, is no.
Lekgoa is not racist or hate speech as the word describes real historical power relationships in South African society, with the intent of restoring lost dignity as a result of dispossession of property, labour and identity.
In a colonial and apartheid context, the term describes accurately the relationship of domination and subordination between white and black, and has the political meaning that the ‘oppressor is not human.’ In other words, it is an affirmation of black humanity in the face of oppression, and a reversal of a negative racial stereotype (‘blacks are not human’).
It may be revealing to whites that blacks have labelled them in way that seems like a stereotype. This parodies the pathological behaviour deeply embedded in the colonial mentality.
The distance between lekgoa and motho is equivalent to the distance between inhuman and human, oppressors and oppressed, between the superior and the inferior, the civilised and the uncivilised, ‘whiteness’ and ‘blackness’ – in other words the whole spectrum of colonial ideology about indigenous peoples. The Sesotho version of the African proverb ‘motho ke motho ka batho ba bangwe’ (literally ‘a person is a person through other people) is the polar opposite of Robert Frost’s oft-misquoted dictum, “Good fences make good neighbours”, which describes elegantly the construction of social boundaries that define ‘white identity’.
The term lekgoa mocks this sense of racial superiority, which is founded on an act of self-deception or, if you like, a delusional state of consciousness. It is an act of will against oppression.
The opposites of ‘blackness’ and ‘whiteness’ are now part of our political discourse. This analysis of the word lekgoa aptly illustrates this.
In a sense, the term ‘lekgoa’ reveals a deep understanding of the pathologies of ‘whiteness,’ which could be described in terms such as ‘false consciousness,’ ‘false self,’ ‘alienated,’ ‘denial’ or even ‘delusional’. It is ironic that this pathological state is evident to blacks and was an integral element of Black Consciousness thinking in the 1970s.
In my experience, outside of the rituals of ‘civilised social discourse,’ these pathologies are the topic of ridicule in black communities. This statement may be rejected by whites as offensive and groundless and even by some blacks out of concern to retain decorum in their relationships with whites. But it is an undeniable reality.
I believe that it is critical at this time for our society to confront these pathologies and to explore the freedom that comes with awareness of the roots of pathological behaviour in everyday social relationships.
about 9 months ago
See submission on ‘lekgoa’, above.
Zackie. We are in complete agreement on the main substance of your letter. I am not sure where you think we disagree, but will assume that this may be it:
“I am looking at the content of Maroga’s response (not necessarily to validate it completely), because it reflects a view of whiteness that is not just his own perception, but is part of deep social discourse in black communities, and is expressed very clearly, particularly in the Sotho language group/ culture/ polity (Sepedi) that Maroga comes from.”
I would like to post the background to this comment so that I can explain this more fully. I am not sure how to do this. Help required!… Read more
Also, I am assuming that you interpreted my rhetorical question – what is REAL racism? (in response to the use of the words ‘real racism’ in a prior comment – to mean that I think racism is about perceptions, or something. My comment puts my view:
“Context is not just about material, objective context, and this is at the heart of the concept of ideology. ‘The past is not dead. The past is not even the past.’ ”
My current writing project is to explore and self-reflect on the meaning of ‘whiteness’ as expressed in the root meaning of the word ‘lekgoa’ (as used in everyday language), hence this sentence:
“Denial does not address the problem that the behaviour which characterises whiteness is self-evident to others, and is unresolved.” (Add: in the word ‘lekgoa’).
The word ‘lekgoa’ is fundamentally located in relations of domination and subordination, including conquest, dispossession, oppression etc. The fact that the word is still used in daily conversation about whites (not as in white skinnned people, or about whites exclusively, but to express disapproval/ anger at humiliation) indicates that all is not well in ‘post-racial’ South Africa.