Zuma's not my president - Thought Leader

by Christopher Holdridge

Yesterday, I was horrified to read Jacob Zuma’s comments about Afrikaners being the only true white South Africans. With an election only three weeks away, Zuma was addressing a group of representatives of Afrikaans-speaking organisations in Sandton, Johannesburg. He stated before the gathering that “in South Africa it is only the Afrikaners (who) are South African in the true sense of the word. They don’t carry two passports”. As a white English-speaker, and proudly South African to boot, I was highly offended by such a divisive and exclusionary remark being made by our (almost definite) future president.

Zuma’s statement undermines the vision of a rainbow nation that our country prides itself in. The motto of our coat of arms and the preamble to our Constitution states that we are “united in our diversity”, a message embodied in the leadership style of former president Nelson Mandela and a vital component of forging reconciliation in our nation. By crudely characterising all non-Afrikaans whites as unpatriotic would-be emigrants toting their “two passports”, Zuma is using rhetoric that alienates one of many vital minorities in our democracy. That such comments came from the soon-to-be elected president of our country leaves me without trust in a leader who has displayed a record of preaching exclusionary politics. Zuma is in many ways a political chameleon who proudly wears a T-shirt proclaiming to be a “100% Zulu boy” at one rally, while pandering to Afrikaner nationalist sentiments at another in order to secure greater votes. To promote pride in one’s cultural heritage is positive and necessary, but to emphasise a subtle message of ethnic superiority is dangerous.

Zuma’s speech praised Afrikaners for having a long history on the continent, for their self-empowerment through minority rule, and their resistance alongside black South Africans against the common enemy of British colonialism. Such a construction of history is a disturbing reformulation of an Afrikaner nationalist narrative that de-emphasises Afrikaners role in our painful and oppressive past, while casting the burden of racism on a demonised British past. One could equally construct an apologist narrative where Britain saved Africans from their Dutch or Afrikaans-speaking racial oppressors, only to have them regain power under apartheid, or an Africanist message that casts all whites as colonisers and not true Africans. Such exercises in historical myth-making are dangerous for they pay lip service to ethnic nationalisms that drown out the voices of vital sections of our diverse population and exclude them from an open debate on the role of all South Africans in our history and identity.

I remain a proud South African, but cannot endorse or support a president who employs such divisive tactics, nor a ruling party that labels any criticism of its decisions or policies as “unpatriotic”. There is no innate “Africanness” or “South Africanness”. Both are socially invented and continually changing concepts that depend on leaders and citizens alike to foster an inclusive notion of national, and even trans-national, identity. Discussions on what this means requires open debate and tolerance among all South Africans.

Desmond Tutu’s recent comments about not looking forward to a Zuma presidency were his right to make. He did not claim to speak for all South Africans, and merely expressed his personal concern for the future of our country. Such openness was, in my opinion, the ultimate individual expression of a patriotism that embraces diversity of opinion over the monolithic rhetoric of exclusionary nationalism. I encourage Jacob Zuma to take note of the brave examples of reconciliatory leadership embodied by Nelson Mandela, Desmond Tutu, Mahatma Gandhi and others, and to rather further the message of an open, diverse and unified nation that many in our country fought so hard for.

Chris is currently studying his for his master’s degree in history at the University of Cape Town and hails from the Mother City. He has a passion for seeking to understand South Africa’s colonial past and the wider meanings of the British empire. He seeks to foster debate on how our history is constructed and its many meanings in contemporary South Africa