By Tiro Makhudu
So a colossal white male threatens a black woman in full view of her impressionable young children, while somewhere else in the same sad little, somewhat backward third world country, a black man retaliated by sending a white female into a top spin with a fearsome backhand after she dumped his food and smacked him in the face. This could very well be purely coincidental and if indeed coincidental, should be quite an indictment on the fabric of our society in all its colourful wonder.
As a tight-lipped, don’t rock the boat you’re cruising in democracy, we are inclined to deracialize the issue in the national sport of denialism because God forbid we actually tackle the mess left in the wake of the toy-soldier march towards unity that was born of the CODESA negotiations and the subsequent rainbow nation fever, a dubious science at best, that followed like LSD in the water mains.
While there remains no prima faci evidence of any kind that racial undertones lie at the centre of what is more than likely a more frequent occurrence than we care to acknowledge, it would be foolish if not plain dangerous to rule out this most likely element as a common denominator at least to some degree.
The fact of the matter is that not many of these occurrences run along the same racial lines. That is to say black on black or white on white to be colloquial. They, in fact, often run across the racial divide but because the words monkey or kaffir are not used, we feel compelled to stew in the illusion that we are living in a progressively non-racial society when we and our children eat in racially assembled cliques at work and school. our tongues roll us, they, them and you people off like butter from a scorching knife, yet we insist on not calling ourselves what we are and chalking down the realities of our circumstances to semantics when truly confronted with them.
Notwithstanding our experience and qualifications, certain job titles are occupied by certain race groups and where the anomaly occurs, the fiscal norm by way of pay grades, will apply. That is the reality we should be swimming from instead of marinating in the illusion of non-racialism.
We are a deeply divided country and will remain thus until we own up to the reality that is no doubt the result of an incrementally angry majority and an entitled privileged few with neither willing to act decisively towards reconciliation, a word tossed around so frequently yet understood so infrequently because as a term, reconciliation seeks to reunite parties to a rift who have never been conciled (not applied here in the dictionary sense).
We must acknowledge that had the racial dynamics not been at play, the end result of the viral videos we saw would have likely been rather different. Not unlike those at any traffic scene, boardroom or construction site. Our water-cooler chats would play out quite differently and our braais would not serve as our confidential outlets for racial frustration!
This is South Africa, a result of self-imposed blinkers and damaging political rhetoric that will have our sons and daughters writing this very piece, years from now!
By Tiro Makhudu
Tiro Makhudu is an aspiring writer who has written for several local television productions and a voice screaming the narrative that needs to be heard with no one willing it to tell it. With an unapologetic, no nonsense approach, Tiro holds no punches and purports to wake the spirit of his fellow man with the belief that that woke spirit will translate into a sharp and pro-African weapon of a mind that will deliver the African from his mind, body and soul penitentiary. An Africanist through and through and all round social commentator, Tiro seeks to plant his tiny seedlings in the landscape of the discourse that will one day give rise to the brightest Africa that the winds of change and hands of time will allow.
