Anatomy of prejudice

Is Barney Pityana correct in saying that the predominant form of racism in South Africa relates to mental processes of which individuals are aware or not aware? At the heart of Dr Pityana’s statement lies the well meaning gestures of an apologist — the xenophobic attacks of a month or so ago are not the the dominant form of South Africa’s legacy of apartheid. The predominant form of racism is subliminal.

If the answer to this question is yes, then I’m convinced that we are asking the wrong question. The question, I believe, we should be asking is this: Why, 14 years after the removal of legal apartheid, do we still have the defining nature of the world of work in South Africa as one where the labour of black people is cheap (notwithstanding the promotion of a new, completely black layer of fat cats), and that of white people privileged? An answer to this question will settle a great number of other subordinate, yet related questions. The key to the anatomy of prejudice in South Africa lies in a serious look at this issue.

Other forms of prejudice (sexism, age-ism, tribalism, etc) have a different path of development in South Africa. They were all, in one way or another, used by economic relations to reinforce dominance in their different spheres of life. The development of racism has an altogether different and profoundly intricate path in South Africa. Its path of growth is intimately bound up with the country’s political economy. Whereas capital used the other forms of prejudice, race played the only significant role in its search for cheap labour. Now it must be said that it’s the aim of capital everywhere to find all labour cheap. The peculiarity of the South African path of capitalist development is that race became the basis upon which class relations were reproduced. For this reason, and this reason only, one finds scientific truth in the postulate that apartheid cannot be reformed; the thing must be destroyed.

The 1921 miners’ strike was the Rubicon setting the foundations for future class relations in the country. White miners were unionised, black miners unorganised. When mine bosses tried to drive wages lower, they met with the militancy of the organised white mine workers. The strength of these unionised workers resulted in mine bosses dropping their intensions to make all labour cheap. The outcome of that struggle was that black labour was decidedly cheap, white labour privileged. White labour, as it were, developed a material interest in policing the labour of their black counterparts. It is this relationship that was refracted through every single lever of power in South Africa.

A casual look at reforms across all state institutions will indicate that there has been some progress in setting parity between white and black workers’ salaries, but capital still functions on the same foundations set in that mine workers’ class struggle of 1921. State institutions and other work streams in the public sector represent an important but not decisive element in the world of work, that is, in the economy. It is in the large so-called private sector that the very inextricability of the link between black and white workers and capital finds itself being worked out stubbornly and with paradoxical logic. Race is still the basis upon which capitalism reproduces its class relations in South Africa.

Which brings me back to Dr Pityana’s view that racism is predominantly subliminal in form in South Africa. The fallacious basis of this view is even more startling when one looks at what he thinks needs to be done (I suppose he was more or less looking at the role of academic institutions in ‘creating the new breed South African’): Awareness raising of the common humanity of black and white in South Africa. Granted, education has much to offer to break down prejudice, but it can only truly and properly be refashioned in the heat of class struggle. The current position of white labour in South Africa is one it won in bitter struggle. No class gives up its position (and with it, its privileges) without a fight. It must to be wrested from it.

The search for the new breed of South African is tied to the anatomy of prejudice in the country. And it must be said — the character of this new breed will remain elusive until the working class refashions the country and places the needs of people central to the reorganisation of the world of work. Anything less than this will be a mere patchwork.