Racism and the #ZumaMustFall movement
A few days ago I suggested that the #ZumaMustFall movement is predominantly middle class, at the moment at least, because Zuma’s latest blunder had its most immediate effect on the middle class. Unemployed people living in informal settlements won’t be complaining about the increased cost of their next overseas holiday because of the fall in the value of the Rand. When it hits the petrol price and taxi fares the working class might begin to sit up and take notice, but that will be sufficiently long after the blunder for the connection to be less obvious – it will take some populist rhetoric from the EFF for that to happen.
Also, the appointment of Pravin Gordhan as finance minister has stopped the slide for the moment, even if it hasn’t restored the status quo ante.
Comments on the #ZumaMustFall movement have also revealed a lot of racism. As one commenter put it Why I didn’t march or chant #zumamustfall — Medium:
The #zumamustfall bandwagon has perpetuated a political discourse that troubles me. Subtle and, at times, overt racism has trumped good intentions. Zuma’s ability to lead this country, while questionable, does not give us the liberty to spout racist rhetoric. I’ve heard people commenting on black people’s inability to lead this country; that whites would do it better. This suggestion repulses me.
And the following exchange on Twitter shows another aspect of this racism:
Zwelinzima Vavi Retweeted charles modisane
Correction it’s us who organised the march & all SAfricans joined. Must we cancel if whites join or chase them away?
Zwelinzima Vavi added,
We live in a society in which people are different in many different ways. Race, culture, class and religion all contribute to our “identity” and what makes use different from one another. “Racism” is what happens when people make “race” the primary and most significant characteristic, and when they interpret all the other differences in terms of race, and especially when they think that that overrides all the things we have in common.
I once had a friend whom I had known for a fairly short time. We grew up in different parts of the country, in different cultures. He was black, I was white. He was Xhosa, I was English. He was from the Eastern Cape, I was from Natal and what is now Gauteng. We were both Christian. When we went to England to study, and found ourselves in a foreign culture, we realised how much more we had in common: we had grown up under the same sky, under the same oppressive government, we were homeboys. I’ve written about these things more fully here: What is African? Race and identity | Khanya
The piece I quoted above, about why the writer did not take part in the #ZumaMustFall march, goes on to mention “white privilege” as a factor. “White privilege” is something that is often misunderstood. Many white people say things like “Apartheid ended more than 20 years ago, we are all equal now. If anything white people are discriminated against in things like affirmative action.”
And it is true that we now have a non-racial constitution. There are no longer any legal privileges attached to being white, and the constitutional court is there as a watchdog.
But twenty years after the end of apartheid, inequalities persist, for example in education. Indeed, one of the criticisms of Zuma and the ANC government is that it has not done enough to redress these inequalities and to improve education. Towards the end of apartheid, the previous National Party government came up with a scheme to allow formerly all-white schools to decide their own admission policies, and admit pupils of other races. When several of them did so, the NP govvernment hastily privatised the schools.
The result was that middle-class black pupils were admitted to formerly all white schools, and that has persisted. But what was the result? White pupils were privileged to meet black middle-class children. But black working-class kids in the townships continued to go to all black schools. So twenty years later, cultural and class barriers remain.
To understand the effect of the cultural barriers still perpetuated by white privilege, please read this article, by someone who understands both cultures: How Mainstream Media Unknowingly Helps The #ANC Use #Zuma As Its Racial Jesus |:
Jacob Zuma – the person and the president, the body that is depicted visually and the figure that is related to politically – is the terrain on which South Africa’s race issues have played themselves out in weird and telling ways. Without realising it, mainstream media has done the ANC a huge favour in playing up the DA’s “Zuma is corrupt” trope because as well-intentioned and truthful as it may be, what it’s done is exacerbate the friction among the races – especially between black and white people – because white people do not know how to level an insult so it lands where it’s intended. This is because colonialism and apartheid skewed racial relations.
Notes from underground 
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