Us-vs-them leads to tragedy; unity is the only way

One of my elders had a conspiracy theory about Phoenix. It sounded outlandish to us even though we were barely in our teens.

The segregationist engineers at the Durban City Council had planned the area in such a way that KwaMashu was sandwiched between Phoenix, to the north, and Newlands East to the south.

In keeping with the Group Areas Act and other discriminatory pieces of legislation, some introduced long before the Nats came to power and introduced Grand Apartheid, KwaMashu was classified as "native/Bantu", Phoenix "Indian" and Newlands East "coloured".

Back then one couldn't leave KwaMashu without passing through Newlands East or driving towards Phoenix.

Hence my elder's conspiracy theory that the two other townships had been established as a buffer in anticipation of the day when the country would be engulfed by a race war.

His reasoning was that when that day came, folks from the three townships would spend much time and energy fighting each other and would not reach the real centre of their grievances, the city.

Before his family and others were forcibly uprooted from Cato Manor, on the outskirts of the city, and were resettled in the former sugar cane plantation that had become KwaMashu township, the elder had witnessed the 1949 race riots. This clearly left an indelible mark on his mind for, in the 1980s, he was one of those who were convinced that a racial Armageddon would be SA's fate.

The Armageddon never arrived. A South African miracle, some often call it.

But nobody needs reminding that this "miracle" did not come as the result of some inexplicable magic. It was the result of hard work by men and women, inside and outside our borders and - in the late 1980s and early 1990s - on both sides of the apartheid divide.

These are people who realised that the future of this country does not lie with just one group but with all of us working towards becoming one nation.

Often when this history is told, the focus is on national icons and other politicians who were involved in the various national dialogues that set us on the path to nonracial democracy, national reconciliation and peace.

But there were many other players, most of them unsung, who contributed as much at grassroots levels to make the nation-building project we embarked on in 1994 a reality.

For instance, the full story is yet to be told of how religious and community leaders in Inanda, Phoenix and KwaMashu worked together in 1985 to end what was threatening to become a new round of racially motivated violence.

There are many other examples across the land. They all demonstrate the high level of maturity that existed among activists and leaders who helped us get to where we are today.

We need to raise our standards, or we run the risk of undoing all the great work that has been done since the early 1990s

Unfortunately in recent years, as electoral politics became more competitive and the battle over scarce resources in society became more acute, we have seen political parties abandon the kind of vision that drove the generation that came before us.

Political entrepreneurs across much of the spectrum are increasingly retreating to their little corners, believing that they can best improve their political fortunes by fanning the fears and anger of their core constituencies.

This is not just limited to the Phoenix poster saga involving the DA but extends to what we hear from the leaders of political parties large and small as they sell the us-vs-them narrative to voters.

This may win them loyalists here and there, increase their support base in one municipality or the other, but what does it mean for the project of building a nonracial nation where all are treated as equal?

We need to raise our standards, or we run the risk of undoing all the great work that has been done since the early 1990s.

Even in the way we debate the constitutional imperative to address past imbalances and transform our institutions to become more representative, we should do so in a way that leaves no-one wondering if their religion, gender or race means they have no place in this country.

Yesterday I spent much of the morning attending the launch of the Aggrey Klaaste Trust. The renowned newspaperman who edited the Sowetan from 1988 to 2002 coined his nation-building initiative during a dark hour in our country's history.

Even as apartheid was tearing the country apart, he was calling on us to pick up the pieces and build for the future.

We have no reason today to retreat from that mission. Even in the silly season of the elections, our eye should always be on the prize - a single nation united in its diversity.