If Nelson Mandela were alive today, what would he say about the state of the nation on Reconciliation Day? Would he see a more united, more humane country than he found when he left prison 30 years ago? Or would he ponder the wreckage of a failed nation-building project, rent by racial division and economic inequality?
Since the Battle of Ncome (or Blood River) on December 16 1838, the day we now know as Reconciliation Day has evolved to reflect the nation’s power balance — between coloniser and colonised, between haves and have-nots. Today it symbolises the post-Codesa national stalemate.
That battle pitted the might of the Zulu army against the firepower of the Voortrekkers, adding another bloody chapter in the epic conflict between the indigenous and settler populations.
In the wake of Ncome, the day was designated Dingaan’s Day in celebration of the settler victory over King Dingane’s army.
Subsequent name changes to the Day of the Covenant and then the Day of the Vow continued to speak to the victors’ historical experience as opposed to that of a vanquished majority, or that of all South Africans.
Unsurprisingly then, December 16 became a symbol of continuing conflict over land dispossession and the disenfranchisement of everyone who was black in SA — leading to the formation of Umkhonto we Sizwe, the ANC’s armed wing, on the same day in 1961.
With the arrival of democracy and the promise of a bright new future, and Mandela at the helm, the day was renamed Reconciliation Day. It was assumed that finally the time had come for black and white to turn swords into ploughshares. But our experience has exploded the monumental myth that we could have reconciled blacks and whites without dismantling the root causes and underpinnings of their long-running conflict.
Take economic inequality. How is it that a quarter century after the supposed end of apartheid we are still rated one of the most unequal countries on earth?
The question is: how can we build reconciliation on a foundation of inequality and grievance, where, for instance, many white people deny their privileged status and see reconciliation as a project essentially to preserve an iniquitous status quo? In their world, Mandela, the architect of post-apartheid SA, has always been merely a mascot for the preservation project.
Which is no wonder that, on the other hand, most black people, victims of unfulfilled promises of a better life, see reconciliation as a gargantuan con trick that has left them largely in the same position, if not worse, as during apartheid.
Instead of the apology they might have expected, they are told by people like Helen Zille and others like-minded about the so-called “benefits” of colonialism. Alternatively, they hear from the likes of FW de Klerk, the last apartheid president, and his fellow travellers of how apartheid was essentially a well-meant policy that happened to have unintended negative consequences.
This denialism is, of course, the necessary basis for a wholesale rejection of corrective action or affirmative action. Instead of being told the truth about the harm done to black people by apartheid, young white people are led to believe that corrective action is, in fact, reverse racial discrimination, targeting them for no reason other than that they are white.
So where did we go adrift? Could the fault have been in our choices as a nation? For, instead of resolutely addressing the economic, racial and other cracks in our society, we opted to paper over them, using fancy jargon like “the new SA” and the “rainbow nation”.
Employing ephemeral things like sporting events, we became the quintessential pretenders, preferring symbolism over substance. And so when Siya Kolisi, the first black Springbok captain, lifted the Webb Ellis Cup in Tokyo, we held that to be the high point of national unity and reconciliation — when it was anything but.
The consequence is that racial conflict between individuals or groups is never far off, always lurking just below the surface, waiting for an ignition spark.
And elsewhere in society we have made only a token effort to break down apartheid barriers and foster mutual understanding between blacks and whites. For starters, we have left the apartheid spatial architecture largely intact — with blacks living in townships and whites in the suburbs, except for the small number of assimilated blacks.
In the education system, for instance, we have formalised and normalised segregated schooling — between “fee-paying” schools (predominantly white and better resourced) and the euphemistically called “no-fee” schools, catering mainly for black children.
And despite the constitutional injunction that “the state must take practical and positive measures to elevate the status and advance the use of” African languages, our policymakers have displayed incredible tardiness on that score. In much of the system, English and Afrikaans hold sway. The result is that the education system has churned out thousands of South Africans who can neither speak an African language nor understand the cultural heritage it embodies — all this in a majority African country. While they are familiar with Shakespeare and Herman Charles Bosman, many young people going through our education system will likely never encounter the works of great writers such as Thomas Mofolo, BW Vilakazi, DC Marivate and DP Monyaise. Or the poetry of Nontsizi Mgqwetho and SEK Mqhayi.
It seems that those who occupy the corridors of power believe that nation building and social cohesion are intellectual concepts merely to adorn Reconciliation Day speeches once a year and nothing more. Yet it should be a given that real reconciliation can occur only if it is it predicated on mutual understanding between those who were deliberately kept apart.
But it is not just the racial wounds that require healing for true reconciliation to happen. What about the walking wounded of pre-1994 political violence, which claimed thousands of lives, with many being unacknowledged noncombatants? Such as those killed in train attacks or in their sleep in Boipatong, Swanieville, kwaMakhutha and other places of carnage too many to mention.
The bloodletting involved not only black political formations but an apartheid state-sponsored third force. It represents a festering wound in our national subconsciousness that requires attention.
As for Nelson Mandela, bless his soul, he never saw reconciliation as a substitute for social justice. He had this to say: “We must therefore act together as a united people, for national reconciliation, for nation building, for the birth of a new world. Let there be justice for all. Let there be peace for all. Let there be work, bread, water and salt for all.”
Note. Not just for a few, nor the rich, nor the powerful, nor one race group. But for all.
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