Et tu, Tutu?

Dear Reverend Tutu,

I apologise for giving this blog entry such a corny name. I realised the phrase “Et tu” had been used at least twice before — once by some old Roman politician and once by Dr Bandula Kothalawala (not to mention the band by that name somewhere on YouTube).

Be that as it may. For the last few days, I have been hopping mad at you. I felt angry, hurt, betrayed and sad because of your ill-timed, badly phrased and economically naïve statement about taxation of rich whites.

I have calmed down. I’ve just made myself a cup of hot chocolate and I feel slightly better now. I am no longer hopping mad at you. I merely disagree with you.

I have tried to see the context in which you said that thing and I have come to the conclusion that you probably meant well. I also found your assessment of the reasons for so-called “black-on-black violence”, very sobering and enlightening. It also helped me, incidentally, understand the new phenomenon of “white-on-white violence” — if you don’t believe that there is such a thing, ask Anton van Niekerk!

Anyway, where was I? Yesterday, I felt ready to launch a full-scale personal attack on you. That might have been seen as “white-on-black violence” by some.

There are two other reasons, besides the cup of hot chocolate, why I refrained from such a verbal assault.

The first is that I don’t want the kind of fanatical and one-sided support from right-wing whites, which I no doubt would have received had I done that. I don’t want to be buddies with the kind of people who believe that Van Niekerk is the devil himself (even if the number on the door of his office is 666).

The second reason is that I know you do not see yourself primarily as a black man, but as a South African. You are broad-minded enough for that. You are not the kind of person who likes to pigeonhole people into categories. You proved that when you wrote a book titled God is not a Christian. May I add that I was very relieved when I heard that God is not a Christian. (Especially coming from you, for you know God personally and probably have insider information?)

May I also add that I do not see myself primarily as a white man, either, nor as a Christian, but as a human being and a fellow South African. I hope you think long and deeply about that one. I hope you might eventually understand that, should you refer to me as “white”, even in a sincere way, you are insulting me.

It’s not that I am ashamed of my whiteness. But I feel strongly that, in the context of present South African dialogue, it is utterly irrelevant, and should have been irrelevant since 1995. It is as irrelevant as the fact that Peter de Villiers has a moustache. (I know it’s hard to ignore blackness and whiteness, just as it is very hard to ignore De Villiers’s moustache, but we should all make an effort.)

When, and if, you call me white, I feel as if I am being slapped in the face. For the last sixteen years, I have tried to get the white/black dichotomy, which I had been brought up to believe in, out of my head. I have tried, and to some extent, begun to succeed in seeing black people as just people, as fellow South Africans. I expected that, by now, and in the light of your history of broadmindedness, you would have succeeded at that even better than I did. What went wrong? Did some rich housewife from Sandton with a bigger BMW than yours cut you off at a traffic circle? Did you happen to land up next to Eric Miyeni at a dinner party? Tell me about it! I will try to understand!

Dear Reverend, in spite of all your kindness, and your broadmindedness, and your good intentions, I feel you made a mistake when you proposed the rich white taxes idea. It may have been a sincere mistake, but it was a mistake. Such a tax scheme will not work, and not merely because it is racially divisive.

It would not work for the simple reason that, in the light of their track record, we don’t know for sure what the government is actually going to do when they receive all that extra bucks. One thing is certain: they won’t say “oh golly, thank God, now at last we have funds to implement land reform properly, and reinstate the ‘willing-buyer-willing-seller principle’ ”. They are more likely to say something like “let’s go buy some more sushi!” (If not sushi, then submarines, or expensive wristwatches, or room service, or airplane tickets, or whatever. Who knows, they might even lend some of it to Mugabe or Gaddafi!)

The ANC may not be quite as rotten to the core as the admittedly biased media have been trying to suggest — Botha’s guys were even worse, and infinitely crueler — but, as we all know by now, there’s a helluva lot of room for improvement. There’s such a terrifying amount of work to be done, so many houses to be built, tons of services to deliver. Allocating more money without properly managing available money would be a bit like handing a glue addict fifty rand and asking him to book himself into rehab.

Moreover, as you yourself implied on numerous occasions, the problems that South Africans face are deep seated and very complex. We are indeed a wounded people. We need more than the Band-Aid of temporary fixes. We need more than toilets, open plan or not. We also need more than De Villiers’s moustache. We need fundamental change.

We need stitches, we need full-scale operations, we need blood transfers, we need serious medicine. We need supplies, infrastructure, organisation. We need a concerted effort of rebuilding and growth. We simply no longer have the time or the luxury to play the blaming game or stereotype one another, especially not if those stereotypes are rooted in the past.

I could give you a list of reasons why I never ever felt as if I benefited under apartheid, and of other white people I know who were severely damaged by apartheid. Apartheid was a truly horrible system. Not only were innocent and ill-informed young soldiers maimed in that senseless war, it was very bad for Zola Budd’s career as well, but let’s not go there.

The bottom line is this: we will never become a proper country, a self-respecting people, a normal society, as long as people are defined or judged by terms such as “Africans” or “not Africans”, “white” or “black”, “Boers” or “K—–s”.

Someone once — you might know who? — coined the term “rainbow nation”, a long time ago. That was a kitsch image, yes, and it was certainly exaggerated — we don’t have any green, blue or purple people as far as I can see. In fact most of us are various shades of tea or coffee — but should we knock non-racialism as a principle just because we no longer like that word? (Between you and me, I kind of miss it, and I wish you’d think up a new one like it.)

Allow me to conclude this letter with a quotation, one I’ve used before (with his permission) from a private email from fellow Thought Leader author and former freedom fighter Lucky Ntuli. I find these few short paragraphs very inspiring; as inspiring, at least, as many of your utterances:

“Miles Davis and playing in the background and all I wish for is for Madiba to live forever. For you and your family to find comfort, happiness and security. For our children to one day pronounce, very proudly, that SA survived because their parents cared and the politicians were moulded in the spirit of Mabiba, Sisulu, Mkwai, Luthuli, Mdi, Mini, Shaka, Cetswayo, Sarel van der Merwe, Ramaphosa, Zille, Van Zyl Slabbert, Suzman, my parents and all those who paid the ultimate sacrifice so we could have SA.

“You know, my father used to say to me the best way to understand the origins of the struggle is to look at the colours of the ANC flag, black, green and gold. ‘We the people of South Africa, are suffering under oppression in this land of ours. With green pastures, under which runs a stream of gold.’ Now this to the old true politicians had a significant meaning. I only wish everyone would understand it as much as they did and I do, to be compelled as do the right thing, serve the people. This is what it was and has always been about.”

Fantastic sentiments, are they not? Perhaps this guy should be the next archbishop, don’t you think?

Anyway, here are my closing thoughts.

Let them tax me if they wish, dear Reverend, I will pay. But I’d rather be taxed as a working South African, and not specifically as a white man. And it would also be nice to know where the money is going.

Respectfully yours,

Koos