Try to see current affairs in SA from black perspective
DEAR white and black comrades
The FW de Klerk column ("Former president De Klerk deserves no honour", August 19) has certainly awoken diverse and passionate responses from all different races hence I see the need to respond. The first call I received on the column was from (white) photojournalist Ivor Markman, who agreed with my sentiments fully that De Klerk deserved no honour.
My (black) aunt over dinner on Wednesday expressed how she thought De Klerk deserved more honour than Jan Smuts and that De Klerk could have been killed for the stance he took in 1990. Interesting indeed!
My unshaken resolve is that De Klerk did not do this of his own will, which would have been worthy of the same honour as Madiba. I vehemently state that De Klerk's contribution is not worthy of the same honour as Madiba and he should not have received that peace prize to begin with.
To honour De Klerk would be equivalent to society pressuring Jacob Zuma to pay back the money for Nkandla, and if, by a long short, JZ does the right thing, then honouring him for it by renaming Durban Jacob Zuma Nkandla City. It's nonsensical.
We therefore cannot honour people for being pressured to do what was right and should have been done in the first place. That is why honour is deserved by the likes of Nelson Mandela because his greatness comes from taking the route of forgiveness without pressure to do so. That kind of consciousness that is pressured to do the right thing does not deserve honour as one of the 21 icons, much less a key street in Cape Town being named after him.
Let's not forget that the same criticism I have given De Klerk, I gladly give to Zuma – for which I am always labelled a coconut or an uncultured African woman and I seem always to get praise from white comrades. One has got to love South Africa!
In regard to being the generation to be more evolved around race issues, my company runs workshops called Let's be racial in the workplace/conversational Xhosa, on how race dynamics affect businesses, and have monthly dialogues around race in the workplace. I invite Ed Gutsche, Marnell van Schoor, Doc or Edward (the ones who criticised the column) to attend the workshop to gain some insight.
What I find lacking in the responses accusing me of being racist in the column is the lack of an olive branch – the same olive branch that Mandela and Desmond Tutu offered at the negotiation table – from Gutsche, Van Schoor, Doc or Edward or to enter into a debate to find out why black people still harbour anger, rather than say "let's move on" without any understanding.
This "time to move on" stance only perpetuates the myth, opinion or stereotype by black people that white people in general are dismissive of the concerns and the experiences of South Africans of African descent during apartheid and post-apartheid when they question or state debates and observations around race.
Have the likes of Gutsche asked in private of another black person why they think that way, what still hurts Africans even in democracy (since we have allegedly moved on) or even had a conversation around black-white relationships with black people in a way that is kind and safe for both parties and with no assumption? Or do they simply not want to hear honest conversations around this issue if it is not aligned with how they think or view the world?
If yes, that is a new form of nazism.
Let us also not be fooled to think that the remnants of race politics do not touch my generation and the born frees. That is simply a packaged lie.
We are simply operating in the same spaces now with some of the past issues of race still with us. Race issues might not be as strong as they were with my mother's generation, but they are there and the sooner we get to the heart of it with understanding, kindness and common vision, the sooner we are able move on with understanding.
I therefore invite the likes of Gutsche for coffee around this conversation or even to attend the Let's be racial workshop.
How I wish that in our history and today the olive branch was first extended by a different race from black since it is the likes of Mandela, Tutu and Jonathan Jansen who have come to be faces of reconciliation, not De Klerk who was pressured by sanctions and an imminent war to come to the negotiation table. What honour is there in that?
How I wish this coffee invite to Gutsche was extended by him first. The fact that I am extending this olive branch first (and that black people have done so first in intense and in memorable events in our country) is what makes me sad, angry at times and yet courageous or maybe naive enough to pursue the ideal of a rainbow nation of complex and diverse voices through conversations in many platforms. How I wish!
Kazeka Mashologu Kuse, Port Elizabeth
