When being black ain't black enough

By Zuki Mqolomba

The recently publicised video clips of Jimmy Manyi’s utterances on coloureds and Indians as the then director-general of labour and government official reveal much of the hidden prejudices and social attitudes that leverage racism and tribalism in South African corridors of power.

In the televised clip titled “Jimmy Manyi on coloureds in the Western Cape”, Manyi goes on to say:

“ … [I] think it’s very important for coloured people in this country to understand that South Africa belongs to them in totality and not just the Western Cape … so this over-concentration of coloured people in the Western Cape is not working for them.”

In another interview on Indian South Africans, Manyi is heard showing great alarm about the composition of Indians (non-Africans) in South Africa’s top-management, who are said to be occupying 5.9% of managerial posts, whereas they ought to occupy only 3%; an achievement accrued to incredible bargaining power expertise in this regard.

To much relief, the extracted statements redeem him somewhat, painting a more heartfelt intent in context, contrary to malicious media coverage of these respective interviews. However, it is the articulation of “demographic analysis” that exposes deeply entrenched prejudice and resentment towards the place of coloureds and Indians in pre and post-democratic South Africa. These expose inter-generational resentments that have been transferred over generations as a direct consequence of the apartheid architecture by intent and design.

To appreciate the subversive nature of Manyi’s logic of “the coloured condition”, the same questions need to be reverted and turned right back at Manyi. For instance, it must be asked in return, what is it with Xhosas and their reluctance to move beyond the borders of the Eastern Cape or Zulus from KwaZulu-Natal, Vendas from Limpopo or Pedis of Mpumalanga? Why should the burden of overcoming coloured concentration be transferred on to coloureds by means of internal migration, if at all, whereas the same is not expected from other tribal groupings?

Where does the need to single out coloureds in the Western Cape as a problem arise from whereas this is not the case for other sub-groupings? Why single out coloureds in particular as if they’re to be faulted for skewed patterns of internal migration, which have been said to account for limited economic opportunities for coloureds, whether or not the linear economic analysis is accurate at all in this regard?

We conveniently forget that this phenomenon of “concentration camps” is an outcome of social engineering under apartheid rather an outcome of choice and reflects colonial patterns of social relations that persist to this day post-independence. Simply stating the obvious by providing an a-historical “analysis”, while apportioning blame on coloureds for the misfortunes of poverty and unemployment in the Western Cape, incorrectly implies coloured unpatriotism. Manyi has shown no leadership at all in this regard.

Instead, he misses the opportunity to pinpoint the social processes by which patterns of social relations are maintained under the democratic dispensation, despite the intervention of law in its attempts to even out power imbalances and opportunities of access, as well as outcomes. This logic conveniently overlooks the various ways in which social processes and social relations continue to marginalise and exclude black people in general, particularly in the Western Cape and the vested hegemonic interests that maintain the status quo. Unfortunately, it takes a little bit more than an educated guess to conclude that the problems in the Western Cape are not functions of simple demand and supply as Manyi would have us believe.

To the contrary, what his attitude shows are prevailing tribalistic tendencies that seek to accumulate on the basis of the exclusion of any “other”. The logic conveniently tells the story of trees, not seeing whole forests for narrow accumulation purposes (shareholding, employment equity etc). The logic is backward and Trevor Manuel correctly rejects it with the level of impunity it deserves. It’s a tribalism of a special type that regards Indians and coloureds as a separate group of black, particularly when it is raised to appease narrow sectarian economic interests, largely those of his own.

As South Africans, we conveniently forget that coloureds, as well as Indians, have equal rights to benefit equally out of black economic empowerment and affirmative action. They too are considered black constitutionally, alongside the Chinese, because of shared struggles. The very same Constitution that promotes the rights to redress, equally apply to them as well, and should apply in regards to equality of access as well as outcomes. Coloureds, Indians and Chinese are considered black under constitutional recourse. Whether we or they like it at all or not!

I do not necessarily agree with the minister’s tone nor the gross accusations he levels on Manyi in glaring attempts to annihilate his person. However, I do believe it to have been correct on the part of the aggrieved minister to address such public blunders and unofficial public statements, and publicly so, as part of his duty as a citizen to interface with a seemingly contested national question. The debate about the place and rights of coloured and Indian people needs to be had, their rights defended. And where reckless public utterances by government officials threaten to unravel the gains of our hard-earned democracy, public ideological contestations need to be the order of the day.

Worse off, however, lays a deeper semantic crisis. The tragedy of this debate, whether spurned on by reckless utterances or convenient ignorance, largely lies with the constant use of social categories to deny social groups basic rights to recourse. I loathe how “blackness” is so easily used in the same ways as black was used under apartheid: for narrow tribalist and racialist purposes as a basis to discriminate, to humiliate, divide and to other.

At the end of the day, my coloured sister is exactly that: she’s as coloured as the stripes on my back, the dry cracks on my swollen feet, my beat down back so heavy-laden and the tears that flood my pillow each morning as I’m obliged to battle a world of privileged possibilities. A defence of her rights is as good as a defence of mine.

Zukiswa Mqolomba is doing her second masters at the University of Cape Town. She recently completed a masters at the University of Cape Town, where she was SRC president. She is a Mandela-Rhodes scholar and writes in her personal capacity.