The racial divisions of class keep racism alive

By Zukiswa Mqolombo

I read a thought provoking piece by fellow Scholar, Suntosh Pillay. His was a response to Andile Mngxitama’s little red book Blacks can’t be Racist. His proposition contested Andile’s one, and sought to affirm that black people in postmodern South Africa can be, and often are indeed, racist.

This prompted my short note today. My value proposition is this: Racism will forever be a permanent feature in South Africa’s body politic, unless the racial divisions of class are resolved.

The unfortunate reality is that racism will forever remain a permanent feature in SA body politic unless the racial divide of class subjugation is not attended to and decisively so. This is indeed a sad reality, but an accurate account nonetheless. Mine is a materialist approach to questions of race relations in South Africa.

I stand to be corrected, but my analysis is that post-democratic South Africa faces a class question, more than a race question for its own sake. It’s the manifestation of class subjugation in visible racial forms that can account for racism in South Africa. This is largely attributable to the heritage of apartheid and the decades of colonial rule. The main cause of racial concern is based largely on gross inequalities between black and white, and even among black people as a distinct racial group on their own.

My assessment of racial subjugation pre-1994 South Africa leads me to conclude that racial subjugation served largely economic purposes.

Racism came about as a direct consequence of profit motivation by a new breed of capitalist class on South African shores. It was the gross obsession of an accumulation regime that sought to accumulate wealth at all costs that produced and has since reproduced persistent racism in South Africa. It was this capitalist class (which happened to be white as a consequent of accidents of history), which so enslaved and devalued the labour of the majority “other”. The black majority merely fell victim to wrong motives and inhumane economic tactic.

The only way in which the capitalist class (as a minority) could sustain the super exploitation of the mineral wealth of “the majority other” was by the structural imposition of a racist ideological superstructure, which justified class subjugation by racial lines.

By tempering with the psycho-social realm of mainstream society, the “self” could justify and prolong the enslavement and super-exploitation of the “majority other”.

The creation of the super-class (of whites only) and class underdogs (of blacks only), subjugation by racial lines is what has produced and continues to reproduce racist South Africa.

So, if we don’t address the racial divisions of class subjugation, racism will forever be an albatross and a permanent feature of South Africa’s body politics.

If we don’t address the class questions, as a consequent of historic disadvantage, racism will remain a permanent feature in South African society.

It’s in context of the history of apartheid and colonial rule that I make the proposition that “the national question is indeed a class question”. It’s the racial manifestation of class subjugation, in ugly yet visible and concrete terms, that has reproduced and continues to reproduce the albatross racism.

Zukiswa Mqolomba is completing her master’s degree in social sciences at the University of Cape Town.