Reitz Four debate should move beyond race

By Rachel Nyaradzo Adams

I have grappled with the Reitz Four saga for some time now. When I first watched the video, I was in the process of completing research for my master’s dissertation which explored the difficulties of “deracialising” South African universities. Using my alma mater, the University of Cape Town, as a case study, it became evident that though “race” or “racism” was often close at hand as the explanation for many of the university’s struggles with retaining young black learners and so on, it was often not the real cause for slow transformation within the university (though it played a certain role in the process).

What the weight of the evidence showed is that when it comes to curriculum, institutional and structural challenges faced by the university, it was easier for learners and educators alike (both black and white), to resort to “race” as an explanation for these challenges. Black learners would for example complain that professors discriminated against them because of their blackness, while some of the language used by a number of white educators was laden with the “us and them” jargon that insinuated a kind of white superiority.

Digging deeper, however, it was clear that the more pertinent challenges in this context were largely infrastructural than they were of a racial nature. The university needed to recognise that despite many useful and recognisable efforts, they had not created nearly enough equal opportunity for some learners to succeed as they had for others. Barriers had been created (whether purposefully or not) for many black learners through things like, language (a resistance to recognising the validity of a “poorer English” when it came to marking scripts, especially in the social sciences for example), the hierarchy of cultures (UCT is by and large Eurocentric), and a largely Eurocentric curriculum amongst other things.

Many of the learners and educators (particularly educators) were aware of these issues (these findings are not new). But what was interesting in the whole experience was the ease with which people slipped into “racial” reasoning when conditions became frustrating or difficult to explain. At the height of a frustrating conversation, I knew that race was lurking, waiting to be pulled from the corridors of history and placed neatly once again as a valid tool of analysis in the present.

But what I also knew is that when learners complained of racism, what they were most likely frustrated about was a lack of opportunity and limited access to academic success. What they were asking for were resources and validation of their peculiar challenges which stem largely from systemic and background issues. What they were rightly demanding was that the university be more cognizant of its diversity and effect the changes needed to accommodate that diversity. And when they levelled their valid arguments for this to a largely white audience (in the form of management and professors) and were either ignored or dismissed, then race and racism became the next conversation to be had. And whether race was the issue here or not, it can be argued that had the university put in place the infrastructures really needed to make these students successful, then the race conversation would become less salient or possibly even obsolete.

Fast forward to the Reitz Four. As I watched that video over and over again on YouTube I must admit that what I saw (and still see) more than anything else is four very ignorant and idiotic men who clearly have a limited moral compass about how to treat fellow human beings. I see young men so caught up in their own mundaneness that they had time (and resources) to make a video in which they use other human beings (elders for that matter), as their guinea pigs for a distasteful “Fear Factor” replication. (Interestingly enough, the images took me back to my days at UCT when I witnessed many white male students play out similar “initiation” ceremonies, except in this case they were doing it to each other, and the conditions were even more appalling). I see young men who did not know where to draw the line between pranks that may be acceptable with your friends and the respect that is due to those who may not be interested or understand the implications of the actions you impose on them.

The unfortunate thing is that in this case, these boys created a sensitive image (and situation) that arouses too many painful memories for everyone in this country. And as illustrated in the research I mention above, amidst their evidently regressive behaviour, they further regressed into racial language to justify or explain their antics. And what better thing to do in a country where race is still so salient? What better thing to do when four misdirected and ill-socialised young boys decide that they are going to be “funny” and create a video that they are going to later show as entertainment to their friends or to the cyber community? They knew it would pull an audience! They knew it would raise controversy! And look! It worked.

Is this to say that the UFS boys were not racist? Maybe they were, maybe they were not. There is no litmus test available to prove racism, seeing race itself is effectively a construct. What can be said for sure, however, is that here is a country so affected and influenced by a racialised history that the only language these boys had to explain their behaviour was racial. It was easy for them too — the context they were acting in was very racialised. What can also be said for sure is that here is a country so caught up in the limits of racial discourse that any misunderstanding that happens between lighter and darker skins is necessarily racial. And this may be true but what is then to be said about cases where the new middle class of black people also treat their domestic help like “lesser than” beings? What is to be said about an emerging class of black people who now find it difficult to “fraternise with the help”. What is to be said about the amount of abuse that is heaped onto domestic help in black households including physical and even sexual abuse! These things exist. The only difference is that they have not been caught on tape and they have not been brought into popular discourse!

What I believe the Reitz Four video should have done for this country was to create room for a discourse not on race but on economic disparities and the vulnerability it creates for too many of this country’s poor. What that video should have done was to inspire an outcry about worker rights and the level to which institutions fail to protect their workers. What that video should have done was to bring to the fore issues of elitism and classism which are a disease of all of us within the capitalist system, black and white! What that video should have done was to create a platform from which those workers were allowed voice, their own voice, in which they could interpret the situation for us instead of us interpreting it for them.

Am I saying that race is not an issue in South Africa? Well, no. I for one have been troubled by white supremacist attitudes in this country for a long time. I have been bothered by the arrogance and sense of entitlement that a number of white people still walk around with, often in subtle but recognisable ways. I am angered daily by evidence around me that white privilege still exists and that I remain patronised by it on many levels! I have been confounded by white people that really believe that they are superior to me by virtue of the fact that they have a paler skin and I have a darker skin. But I am equally troubled by the nuances of my own inferiority complex (which often catches me by surprise), and allows me to descend into thinking in an “us and them” mind-frame. I am also troubled by a growing black elite who now act equally as selfishly and patronisingly as their former coloniser.

The point, however, is that the regression continually to racial language to address such issues, while emotionally satisfying in some ways, tends to mask larger structural issues and processes that remain unchallenged. The point is that racial language has become too close to us to the extent where it has become the be all and end all of many a political and social debate. It simply does not allow us to think strategically but traps us in an emotional and angry cycle that limits our ability to get to the root of these matters — and the root is largely economic and political.

And South Africa will do well to remember that it was the same regression into ethnic language that got Rwanda into trouble in 1994? In fact, in Rwanda it regressed to such an extent that Tutsis became “cockroaches” that must be exterminated. And because ethnicity was so salient in that context, all it took was a radio broadcast, machetes and a hundred days to create genocide of shocking proportions! I am sure Rwandans would have never imagined the power of their own language and discourses in creating such a bloody episode. But it did and the results did nothing to address the real issue — a growing gap between those with access to resources and those without.

This is a warning to all of us that if we do not do the real work that needs to be done to close the gap between those with access to resources and those without, then we will soon find ourselves in the regressive state that often leads to bloody wars that are justified through racial/ethnic language but really have economics, resources and/or issues of access at their base. We address that, and then we may very well have ridden ourselves of race issues in this country. And anyone who will want to regress into racial language or behaviour again will be, well, plain ignorant and silly!

So I pose the question: what if the Reitz Four were more disrespectful, inhumane and ignorant than they were racist? Would that allow us to go beyond the race debate and challenge the real gaps in this country that allow certain people to be more vulnerable to abuse than others?

Rachel Nyaradzo Adams has a master’s degree in African Studies from Oxford University. She is a social scientist who is openly disgruntled by current world systems and seeks to make commentary that will make us uncomfortable with them.