The Coloured Issue --- dealing in lies

This issue needs to be settled, dispassionately. It is important on a number of counts, especially as it now reposes very much in a “growth sector”, as the different races find that opposites attract and that there is real magic in difference. Some are even mooting the proposition that the World’s populace will sooner, rather than later, be a nice shade of honey brown.

It is important also because, in microcosm, it is a touchstone on which propositions of social justice are tested. These range from tribalistic attitudes to broader matters of social engineering.

“Since Coloured people are neither truly white, brown nor black, a government obsessed with colour as a basic criterion in the treatment of human beings, is tripped up and confused about what to do. So it resorts to makeshift and unprincipled solutions like artificially defining all "non-white" people as Black. The consequences for us Coloured people are organically induced challenges, ever present, hardly acknowledged; in a minefield of obfuscation”.¹

In May, 2011 a film was screened titled “I'm Not Black, I'm Coloured”, Identity Crisis at the Cape of Good Hope” by Mondé World Films  depicting the plight of Coloured folk in the new South Africa, on account of an inherently racist Affirmative Action transformational model.²

Monde Films was quickly vindicated when it was revealed that chief South African government spokesman, Jimmy Manyi, had insisted there was an “oversupply” of Coloureds in the Western Cape and suggested they “spread in the rest of the country”. He said their “over-concentration” in the province “is not working for them”. The comments were made in April during a debate about affirmative action that appeared on KykNet’s Robinson Regstreeks show.

At a stroke this chief government spokesman gave the lie to the pretence that Coloured folk were regarded and accepted as Black. He let the cat out of the bag. Claimed government policy was a hypocritical lie. This was confirmed when the government then signed off on a Bill that would have had the effect of forcing employers to dump an estimated one million Coloureds in the Western Cape, on the basis that they were not, in fact, Black.

So we know that it is a legitimate issue. Like all such issues there are consequences if mishandled, sometimes dreadful consequences. Is the issue being mishandled? 

The answer is Yes. It is yes as regards Coloured folk being labelled as Black, and pressured into acceptance of the label by societal attitudes and verbalization.

South Africa is a quintessential example in that, amongst other things, Coloured folk are being denied the attainment of social justice, under its transformational model, unless they claim and prove that they are Black, even if they are visually "snow white" with green eyes.

For rejecting this classification, I have been roundly condemned by even my most trusted and respected of Black friends. A Namibian judicial officer, who I hold in the highest regard, said he just could not believe that, especially as I was a Judge, I could/would not accept a now internationally accepted social norm that there is no such thing as “Coloured”. You are either White or you are Black. This was more or less repeated just yesterday by a revered Face Book friend who assured me that this was most certainly the situation in Europe.

To these of my friends, and all others who understandably hold to this view I have this to say. You have unwittingly joined a world in which dealing in “convenient untruths” is a now a norm at pandemic levels. There are innumerable examples of this. We have witnessed them being listed on our site, lies damned lies, ranging from historical distortions to blatant propaganda, whether it be about why Iraq was invaded to Ian Smith saving Rhodesia from communism.

You see the statement that nearly all Coloured folk regard themselves as Black is simply untrue. If you accept that a Coloured person is anyone who also has African blood in his/her veins, you will quickly realize that there are millions of human beings on this planet who have the now notorious “one drop of black blood” in their veins but do not regard themselves as Black for a nanosecond. Neither are they regarded as Black. It is an open secret that most White Afrikaners in South Africa fall into this category. Facts are awkward things, when you are sucked into accepting lies.

I am not Black. That is a simple fact, that even a five-year-old child will confirm to you without the slightest hesitation. More importantly I am anthropologically not Black. Genetically I am Euro-African, anthropologically 50% Caucasian and 50% African. That is a fact. It is the reality. It cannot be denied, wished away, obfuscated or rationalized into something else!

To say or pretend otherwise is to propagate a lie. Lies are bad. I was first taught this by my African grandmother, Mafulela Thebe.

“I loved being at my granny's village, comprising a cluster of pole and dagga huts with thatched roofs. However, I was extremely resentful of the fact that all those around me were black and I was brown. Also my hair was almost completely straight. This induced a serious identity crisis. When my mother arrived to fetch me she called me by name Vavie. I protested bitterly and tearfully in isiNdebele - "I am not Vavie. I am Ndiweni ... Me I am Ndiweni""
My grandmother was not impressed. She explained that I was not "umuntu um'nyama" [a black person]- that I was "umlungu" [of White status patrilineally ] - that I should never forget this and be proud of what I was, otherwise she would have to use a switch to get me to understand”.¹

However my friends are right. All over the world Coloured folk are referred to as Black. Millions refer to themselves as Black. President Barrack Obama, Euro-African like me, is also referred to as Black, even though he was actually brought up by a White grandmother.
It is symptomatic of the extent to which our world deals in lies. This one is understandable. It is called a “social construct”.³  

Social construct is a convenient label.  Packaging is everything.  It cloaks the thing in legitimacy. It makes the lie acceptable, even desirable, as my friends insist.

So why do I reject the thing?  Why do I seemingly refuse to accept reality?  Why swim against the tide? Why be stubborn?  Why be unrealistic?  Why do I refuse to accept the label "Black"? 

Might I ask all of you to put the following statement to any competent psychologist or criminologist.

“Judge Chris Greenland claims that self image is deeply embedded in the human psyche. It is critical to human development. Confusion around issues of self image are inherently dangerous and can, in the longer term, stunt development, induce personality aberrations and inhibit the realization of potential. There is a direct correlation between deviance and criminality, on the one hand, and such confusion, on the other.”.

You will not find one reputable psychologist or criminologist that will disagree with that statement. So there you have it. If you want to bugger up your children psychologically, go along with the lie. Children can absolutely differentiate between lies and truth.  The experts will also confirm this. Children know when you are lying. They have eyes. They can see themselves in the mirror. They do not appreciate the fact that it is not regarded as a lie because it is packaged as a “social construct”.

The experts will also confirm that what is actually needed is acceptance of what and who you are in a culture of self-pride. To influence a brown child that he/she is black is to force a lie on the child, induce confusion, destroy such acceptance and inhibit self-pride. It is a very dangerous business.

It is, of course, quite obscenely ironic that the social construct is a product of racism. It is a legacy from an era in the United States when all non-white folk where forced into one camp, on account of rejection by the dominant White group. You were to be labelled black, whatever your actual skin colour, on account of the fact that you had just “one drop” of African blood. Since anything black was so bad you were to be cast into the larger Black pool of the rejected, despised, humiliated and abused! It is this diabolical legacy that now informs the so-called social construct. We have embraced the infamous “one drop” rule and made it our own. Wow!

My friend Tendai has said – “I am in a relationship with a white girl and you need to understand that our children are not going to be brought up as anything but Black!”

Tendai you are red carded … voted off the island … for firstly displaying typical African male historical chauvinism and secondly, racism. Yes – racism, with respect! You see the definition of racism includes not according another human being full recognition on account of their ethnicity. To accord your wife’s ethnicity absolutely no value in the ethnicity of your child is racist. Worst still you will seek to impose this perspective on your child! A racist culture is going to be added to the confusion the child will be already experiencing. The child needs to be imbued with pride about each of his/her parents, and pride in his/herself for being part of both – not one!

Miss-identification with one parent can have a very profound consequence. For instance, if a male child adopts a father image of its mother before the age of six, this can cause it to become homosexual.

So can I invite you to be concerned with truth, not lies and not play dangerous games with your children? This does not mean that your child will not grow up to regard himself/herself as Black or identify with Black causes. Conversely, the child may grow up to regard himself/herself as White … or Brown, like me.

However, it will be a choice made by a child imbued with a sense of self-acceptance and pride. It will be an informed choice shaped by other societal factors that present in its environment. It will do so in its own interests, especially on account of what gives him/her the greatest sense of belonging.

A sense of belonging is important. Personally I have always felt that I belong to the larger Black community.

This is understandable. Like millions of other Coloured Zimbabweans, I was welcomed into this world by the Black community and given love and comfort. Later I was liberated by mostly Black freedom fighters. The fight against racist oppression was captained by Blacks, like Martin Luther King Jr and Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela. I, therefore, have been drawn into that community by real-life experiences. I can belong there without lying about who and what I am.

When I look at my life I am happy with it.  I think I did good. I am forever indebted to my Black grandmother for having given me a very good start in life, by insisting that I accept who and what am.

Minority groups, all over the World, need to find the label that best fits their self image and accords with truth. They should not accept what is conveniently forced on them by dominant groups. They must insist that they are accepted for who and what they actually are! . In Zimbabwe we are referred to by the Black majority as "makhaaradis”, (Coloureds). Wonderful!!!!

“I am not a little bit of many things; but I am the sufficient representation of many things. I am not an incompletion of all these races; but I am a masterpiece of the prolific. I am an entirety, I am not a lack of anything; rather I am a whole of many things. God did not see it needful to make me generic. He thinks I am better than that.”
Joy Bell 

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¹ Extract from “The Other – without fear, favour or prejudice” by Judge Chris N Greenland. Book site - http://theother.orgfree.com/ 
²  I'm Not Black, I'm Coloured - The Film   https://www.facebook.com/INBIC
^3. See -  Ethnicity … Homo Sapiens and the Black aberration ---  http://coginito.blogspot.com/2011/02/ethnicity-homo-sapiens-and-black.html

Dubula ibhunu --- (Kill the Boer song) A Nation in Trouble

Julius Malema

South Africa is a constitutional democracy that came into being, with the rapturous acclaim of the whole world, as epitomizing the ultimate triumph of good over evil. In 1994 Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela stood astride an adoring world; a moral giant in his embodiment of everything that was truly good about the human spirit. Thereafter South Africa adopted a constitution, that it has touted as being the best in the world, so as to ensure that these perceptions were not just an illusion, but a reality for all of its people.

Today, 17 years later, the nation is as divided as ever. Our Black dominated government leads the Black majority in emotional rhetoric that rejects, condemns and demeans a judgment of its own court of justice. At the very heart of this angry discontent is the fact that the court has, in a judgment, sought to protect the rights and interests of a White minority. For this the Black majority is being encouraged to be deeply offended and/or angered. The exhaustively reasoned judgment of a High Court Judge, (sitting in the Equality Court) arrived at after some five months of consideration, is dismissed out of hand. He is wrong, he is wrong! ...  and is seeking to expunge Black struggle history! ... is the resounding refrain bugled right from the top.

The facts are simple. Julius Malema, controversial African National Congress Youth President, repeatedly sang a struggle song, the impact line of which is dubula ibhunu, which literally translated means “Shoot the Boer”. The term Boer has always referred to White Afrikaner farmers. AfriForum, a zealously driven White Afrikaner dominated interest group, took the issue to the Equality Court,  arguing that the singing of the song constituted hate speech as it could reasonable induce endangerment, dislike/antipathy for and/or a demeaning of its members.

• There was no dispute that the ordinary meaning of the words, “Shoot the Boer”, in the song, constitutes hate speech. 
• Julius Malema, and the ANC, argued that the ordinary meaning of the words should not be applied, as when the song was conceived and sung, during the struggle, it referred to “destroying the evil apartheid system” and not to the killing of White farmers. 
• It was therefore in this “historical context” that the song was still being sung, and since no mischief was intended, its singing was not hate speech.

The Court agreed with AfriForum that the words constituted hate speech and banned the singing of the song in public or in private, ruling that it had no longer has a place in our constitutional democracy, with its legislated imperatives of nation building.

The universal response to this ruling at leadership level has been one of deep offense and anger. This nation is in trouble. It is in trouble because it is blindingly obvious that there is a complete lack of understanding of the imperatives of our constitutional democracy, particularly the most precious commodity of equality before the law. It is therefore necessary to set out, with the simplicity that characterizes truth, an explanation of the reality of our situation. Judge Colin Lamont has already set out, with commendable exhaustiveness, a jurisprudential version of this. This is for our leaders and all of us ordinary folk.

1. When our constitution was adopted everything changed forever! 
2.  Hostilities ended, races were reconciled and all citizens were rendered equal before the law. 
3.  In such a situation there can be no room for any person calling for the shooting (killing) of any other person, whatever the reason. 
4.  The fact that the words used have a particular meaning that was ascribed and applied in struggle history changes nothing as, by law, Judge Lamont was constrained to apply the “ordinary meaning” of the words. 
5.  In doing so Judge Lamont is upholding his sworn duty under our Constitution to apply the law “without fear, favour or prejudice”. He has no option. His hands are tied. 
6.  In any event, common sense tells us that, 17 years after the fact of the struggle there are likely to be more, not less, human beings who are totally unaware of the particular meaning that the ANC ascribes to the words. Farmers are already being killed at significant levels by criminal elements. The exhortation in the song can only make things worse. 
7.  In giving this judgment the court has in no way “expunged ANC history”, as emotively claimed by just about all leaders of the ANC. History can never be expunged. That is a simple fact. History is just that – history. By its very nature history remains in the past. It does not exist in the present. Expunging ANC history was, and remains, an impossibility. 
8.  In effect, the judge has ruled that the ANC cannot dredge up historical behaviour and culture so as to endanger, threaten or demean citizens to-day. 
9.  There is nothing new about the fact that practices, behaviour, and culture that had a strong place in history are discarded, even criminalized. No one can deny that the inequality of women generally was once entrenched. Today the Constitution forbids it. One twin was killed at birth. Today that would constitute infanticide. In isiNdebele culture a baby would be killed (as a wizard/witch) if its top teeth appeared first. That too is now classified as murder. There are many other examples. 
10.  Conversely White Afrikaners are debarred from preaching that Blacks were Biblically ordained to be “hewers of wood and drawers of water” which was their culture, used to underpin the evil apartheid system. Preaching that now would undoubtedly be classified as hate speech. 
11.  Like the song in question all these historical practices are now part of history. Whether they can or cannot be invoked is a matter of law as applied under our “World beating” Constitution, however much we may be emotionally or romantically attached to that historical practice.

It is as simple as that. Hence the tragedy of rampant misunderstanding at leadership level. A Court of Justice is now being portrayed as traitorous. One revered political commentator even  adverted to the fact that Judge Lamont was of apartheid vintage. Such talk and posturing is highly irresponsible and dangerous.

The nation is in trouble. If our leaders do not understand the realities of a constitutional democracy we are in serious trouble. The danger is of new tyrannies becoming manifest on account of a culture of “might is right”. 

The extent to which minorities are protected is a sure indicator of the extent to which a country is strong or weak on social justice and human rights. History has repeatedly shown that the majority are often wrong. That is why we have courts to ensure protection of all, and equality under the law. The seeming contempt with which a carefully considered judgment of a court of justice is being rejected undermines the very essence of our constitutional democracy. The courts are being brought into disrepute and the rule of law subverted.

Leadership, represented by President Jacob Zuma, gave solemn undertakings that the decision of the Courts would be respected. This decision is being visited with disrespect and contempt as evidenced by Malema's unchallenged statements that the Court seeks to take South Africa back to apartheid days.  The whole approach appears ton be fueled by a belief that because the ANC community prefers something else, the decision "must be wrong". 

Might is not right! history has repeatedly proved this. In South Africa we have the very significant precedent that the vast majority hold to the view that capital punishment is not just desirable, but an imperative. The Courts ruled otherwise. Government led the nation in acceptance of this ruling! However, it now fails to see that it is simply wrong to reject another decision by the court because the latest decision is politically ":inconvenient".

Will everyone please take a step back, take a deep breath and quietly and soberly reflect on these realities. 
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PS: Professor Steven Friedman makes a seemingly good point that it would be better not to have a ban but allow people to openly trade insults as banning breeds resentment.

True -- very true -- for mature democracies!! Africa is quite a different matter ... and actual experience has shown how inter racial/tribal "labeling" can result in situations as bad as genocide. Judge Lamont understandably adverted to this. 

In South Africa we have already had a horrific saga of xenophobic violence because foreigners were linked to social injustice -- just as Malema is linking the Boers to subsisting dispossession and economic disadvantage. 

PPS: 

An Australian court has ruled that articles on fair skinned Aboriginals contravened their Racial Discrimination Act.

The articles, which were published in 2009, were headlined "It's so hip to be black'' and "White fellas in the black''.

Federal Court Justice Mordy Bromberg found that fair-skinned Aboriginal people were reasonably likely to have been "offended, insulted, humiliated or intimidated by the imputations conveyed'' in two articles written by Mr Bolt. 

This case is of relevance to South Africa's consideration of the Malema "Kill the Boer" court saga. Our Judge Lamont appears to be vindicated.