The ongoing debate on race, recently fuelled by a squabble on social media between Democratic Alliance leader Helen Zille and musician Simphiwe Dana, reminded me of a song by the late Jamaican reggae musician, the legendary Peter Tosh.
Through the song, titled “Here Comes the Judge”, Tosh reminisces about the possibility of a court trial in which some of the early European explorers would be held accountable for exploiting the African continent’s natural resources and people.
Tosh singles out a number of celebrated conquerors, amongst them David Livingstone of England, Marco Polo of Italy, Vasco Da Gama of Portugal and Alexander “so-called” the Great of Greece.
In Tosh’s imaginative trial, the early European explorers are charged with a number of crimes, including “robbing and raping Africa”, “stealing black people out of Africa”, “brainwashing black people”, “holding black people in captivity for more than 300 years”, “killing over 50 million black people without a cause” and “teaching black people to hate themselves”.
These men, celebrated at home for “discovering” new places across the world, spreading European culture and values and “civilizing” natives in parts of Africa and South America, amongst other places, deserve no lighter sentence, according to Tosh, than to be “hanged by the tongue” for their role in colonialism.
Informed by his die-hard Africanist intellectual orientation, Tosh wished, like others such as Malcolm X, that retaliation for the sin of colonialism was a possible way in which Africans could settle political scores with their colonisers, so as to turn the page of history knowing that the Englishman had paid for his sins.
In post-apartheid South Africa, the question of the guilt or otherwise of the colonisers and their successive generations remains a sensitive political topic that is best addressed through silence and pretence. The sooner you enter the topic, the more likely you are to attract hostility.
As South Africans, we can claim to have successfully transcended a stage at which the possibility of retaliation as a probable way of resolving our historical injustices is pondered (as in Tosh’s state of mind when he composed Here Comes the Judge). But we can’t claim to have made peace with our past.
Neither can we afford to continue pretending that our future is more important than our past, for the past informs the present and the future. It is because of colonialism and apartheid that we are the country we are today, complete with all our socio-economic challenges.
One can’t seriously deny the real and adverse effects of colonialism and apartheid on today’s South African society as Zille and her party often do. Talk of – and demands for – “equal opportunity” and equal competition amongst unequals overlooks the dreadful effects of apartheid on the historically marginalised.
To label Dana a “professional black”, as Zille did, is to deviate from the real discussion that Dana and others launched about Cape Town as a racist city. Irrespective of whether or not such a description of Cape Town is justified, Zille’s attempted diversion and subsequent resort to labeling an individual only helps to delay a national question ripe for thorough public deliberation.
Every time a chance presents itself for a matured national conversation on race, those involved find a convenient detour by personalising the matter. If it is not Dana being a “professional black”, it is some other individual’s problem.
The nation would rather indulge in collective pretence.
Disclaimer: All articles and letters published on MyNews24 have been independently written by members of News24's community. The views of users published on News24 are therefore their own and do not necessarily represent the views of News24. News24 editors also reserve the right to edit or delete any and all comments received.