Freedom Day calls for agents of change

Seven days after the publication of this edition of ANC TODAY, our country will join together to celebrate the 13th anniversary of our liberation. This will be on 27 April, our Freedom Day.

This important day on our national calendar will provide us with an opportunity to celebrate the advances we have made since the change heralded by the historic General Elections of 27 April 1994. It will also impose an obligation on all of us to consider what next we should do to advance our shared national agenda.

Some among our compatriots have as yet not become fully aware of the fact that our country shares an important national agenda, whose realisation is a task that faces all South African patriots, regardless of colour, class, gender, age or political affiliation.

That national agenda is spelt out in our Constitution. It contains very important injunctions concerning the need for us to build a democratic, non-racial, non-sexist and prosperous South Africa that fully respects and pursues the principle of equality among all our citizens.

The Constitution recognises the reality that to achieve these goals, the new South Africa has to undertake special initiatives, such as affirmative action, to correct the imbalances created by our colonial and apartheid past. In its very Preamble it enjoins us to "recognise the injustices of our past" and says the "supreme law of the Republic (must help us) to heal the divisions of the past".

In the "Equality Clause" it provides that "To promote the achievement of equality, legislative and other measures designed to protect or advance persons, or categories of persons, disadvantaged by unfair discrimination may be taken."

Because they are enshrined in our Constitution, the objectives we have mentioned are the property of our nation as a whole and therefore impose an obligation on all of us actively to contribute to their realisation.

Similarly, the progress we have achieved towards building the kind of South Africa visualised in our Constitution must serve as cause for celebration by all of us because this progress represents an achievement brought about by our collective efforts.

And, indeed, there is much that we should celebrate as we mark Freedom Day 2007. Even the news reported by the media as the year 2007 began continued to confirm that come our 13th Freedom Day, we would have much to celebrate and be proud of.

For instance the media reported that "unabated and widespread optimism drove consumer confidence to a record high during the first quarter of 2007, according to the latest First National Bank and Stellenbosch University's Bureau for Economic Research (FNB/BER) consumer confidence index (CCI)".
This was the highest level recorded in the 25-year existence of the index.

"FNB chief economist Cees Bruggemans said in a statement that the first quarter increase was on the back of significantly more consumers expecting the economy and especially their household finances would improve.

"Confidence readings improved in nearly every category - by population group, household income, language, age, gender and province. The gap between black and white consumer confidence narrowed further to only 10 points."

This confirmed the results of another Consumer Index published early this year, but reported on the second half of 2006. This is the MasterIndex of Consumer Confidence survey for the second half of 2006, which "reveal(ed) that consumer confidence in South Africa remains strongly positive".

The survey showed that "in South Asia, Middle East and Africa (SAMEA), South Africa ranked as the third most confident country overall for the second half of 2006. Presenting the survey results MasterCard's Eddie Grobler said that the current MasterIndex consumer confidence score is 'the second highest that our country has ever achieved'."

Commenting on the results of this survey, the economist Mike Schussler,
said: "The main point however should be that there is still positive economic growth. We need to remember that the economy is also in the longest period of growth since statistics of GDP started around 100 years ago.
Certainly the South African economy is creating jobs and opportunities which positively impacts consumer sentiment."

Early in the year, it was also reported that Mike Flax, executive director of listed property asset managers Madison, had said, "foreign interest in the South African property market has increased at least 10 times since the sale of the Victoria & Alfred (V&A) Waterfront in Cape town to a foreign consortium for $1bn." He said the V&A sale was just the beginning of foreign investor interest in SA and would also boost tourism.

With regard to the tourism mentioned by Mike Flax, our Minister of Environmental Affairs and Tourism, Marthinus van Schalkwyk, told the participants at the Vakantie Beurs, Europe's largest exhibition dedicated to tourism and leisure, in Netherlands, that, "the growth in the number of tourists to South Africa and sub-Saharan Africa is outstripping the industry growth in the rest of the world...We attracted over a million more tourists in 2006 than in 2005, representing an increase of 13.6 percent."

He also said: "Our arrivals growth rates far outstrip the rest of the world, which averaged around 4.5% over a similar period. Growth in South African and indeed sub-Saharan African tourism is driving overwhelmingly positive tourism performance on the continent. Over the past two years Africa has achieved the fastest growth rates of any major region in the world - averaging in the region of 10%."

Earlier this month, the media also reported that, "the continued growth of the South African economy is translating into the creation of thousands of new jobs, according to statistics released last week by Statistics SA. The latest Quarterly Employment Statistics survey shows that in the last three months of 2006 (October to December), the number of jobs in the formal non-agricultural business sector of the South African economy increased by about 107,000, equivalent to 1,086 new jobs a day. This takes the number of jobs in this sector of the economy up to 8,2 million."

Yet another report said that "South Africa's automotive component industry exported R30.3-billion worth of products in 2006, an increase of 32% as compared the previous year's performance...

"The fact that exports of automotive components continued to increase is an indication of the high level of capability and competitiveness of the local industry," Naacam executive director Roger Pitot told Business Day last month.

"We believe that the recent weakening of the rand will open up even more export opportunities in the year to come... The wide range of parts supplied is a confirmation that we can manufacture most automotive components right here in South Africa," Pitot said.

Another report said, "Employers in South Africa continue to be optimistic about adding to their workforces in the second quarter of 2007, according to the results of the Manpower Employment Outlook Survey released yesterday.
Employers in Singapore, Peru, Argentina, South Africa and India report the strongest Quarter 2 hiring plans of the 27 countries and territories surveyed."

The report went on to say: "The Manpower survey showed the most optimistic hiring expectations worldwide for the second quarter are in Singapore, Peru, Argentina, South Africa, India, Australia, New Zealand and Japan. Of the countries surveyed in the Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) region, South African employers are again reporting the strongest hiring expectations in the region, with employers in Ireland, Switzerland and Norway also reporting upbeat hiring plans for the next three months."

Another report reflecting on the South African economy as a whole said "sound macro-economic policies and a strong banking system have positioned South Africa well to resist external shocks, a senior International Monetary Fund (IMF) official told news agency Reuters on Sunday."

" 'We think South Africa has been managing its economic policies very well,'
Saul Lizondo, the IMF's mission chief for South Africa, told Reuters. 'We haven't seen any adverse impact on the economy from the sharp [currency] depreciation in 2006.'

"Lizondo said the IMF considered the South African economy as having 'several strengths in terms of absorbing external shocks,' including low external debt levels, the central bank's growing reserves stockpile, and a flexible exchange rate system."

Another report published as the year began, said that South Africa "breeds an exploding middle class". It said: "In most societies in the world, it takes four to five generations for a person to rise from poverty to affluent middle-class status. In South Africa, a raft of surveys shows this is happening within a single generation. Experts say the American dream, which has lasted for more than 100 years, is starting to wane, while the South African dream is being born."

Relating to yet another important matter concerning the quality of life among our people and the pursuit of the goal of gender equality, yet another report said:

"South Africa is ranked 18th out of a total of 115 economies in the World Economic Forum's 2006 Global Gender Gap Report. The report measures the size of the gender gap in four critical areas of inequality between men and women. When it comes to women's equality, South Africa is a more equal society than any other country in Africa and ahead of many developed nations, including Belgium (20th), the United States (23rd), Switzerland (26th), Austria (27th) and France (70th)."

Yet another report was headed "Nurses returning to SA in droves". It said:
"The grass is not greener on the other side, as South Africa's health professionals have learned. They are now coming back in droves...The good news is that health professionals' organisations are inundated with requests from practitioners who left the country to work overseas, to help them come back...

"Many are desperate to come home, but they have been sending money home and do not have cash. They live in terrible conditions. Sometimes 10 nurses share five single beds in tiny rooms. They also do not have the luxury to quit their jobs overseas and start looking for work here. They are living a month away from bankruptcy...

"Mpho Manana is one of the nurses enjoying the fruits of the Woza Ekhaya campaign. She is working at the Union Hospital in Alberton. 'I cannot say I have gained any experience in London. South Africa has very high nursing standards but we were all treated like newly-qualified nurses because we did not train in Britain,' she said.

"One doctor - who wants to remain anonymous - worked in London for two years and is now employed at the Johannesburg Hospital. She said she had no intentions of staying in the UK. 'I left because of the pressure to pay off my student loan,' she said...

" 'It's fine to work there and live a frugal life because you are sending money back home. But if you spend your money in Britain, that pound does not go as far. Your average doctor cannot afford a housekeeper. Also, the weather is so miserable and at a petrol station you have to get out of the car and pour your own petrol.'

"Other nurses have appealed to the South African Nursing Council to help them cancel their overseas contracts, said a spokesperson who refused to give her name. 'They complained about being discriminated against and the stringent laws under which they have to work,' she said."

(The Woza Ekhaya campaign targeting nurses and other health personnel is run by the Homecoming Revolution, supported by the Netcare Group, which has a 20% shortage of nurses in its wards and 40% in its intensive care units.)

The Bombela Consortium, which is building the Gautrain, has also launched its own Woza Ekhaya campaign, especially targeting South African engineers working abroad. So far it has attracted back into the country 35 civil engineers, 15 of them black. It will continue this work, to bring back home other engineers that are required both by the Gautrain project and our economy as a whole.

The various stories reflected in the reports above tell the good news that, in many respects, we are succeeding in our struggle to build the new South Africa visualised in our Constitution. As it were, they represent the cherry on the cake that we will be celebrating on Freedom Day.

All the successes communicated through these stories came about as a result of determined action by some of our compatriots to make their own contribution to the birth of the new South Africa, whatever their occupation.

The successful work being done by the Homecoming Revolution, the Netcare Group and the Bombela Consortium indicates precisely what we can achieve if each one of us takes it as his or her responsibility, inspired by a shared patriotism, to help build ours into a winning nation.

Once more, on 24 April, we will gather at the Union Building to admit into the ranks of our National Orders other distinguished South Africans and friends from abroad into the ranks of the holders of the Orders of the Baobab, Luthuli and the Companions of OR Tambo. These are eminent personalities who yesterday and today did everything they could to help ensure that we do indeed emerge as a winning nation.

The example set by these eminent personalities should inspire all of us to ask ourselves the question - as we celebrate 13 years of freedom, and 13 years of progress towards the birth of a new nation, what should I do to contribute to the further advance of our country!

When we opened the 2000 National General Council of the ANC, dedicated to building our movement as an agent of change, we said that, among others, "it is also of central importance that we recognise and live up to the objective of ensuring that we continuously mobilise the masses of our people to achieve the aim of people-driven processes of change...We must mobilise the people to act to advance their interests and ourselves engage in action with these masses, drawing in all other community based organisations in a non-sectarian manner...

"This General Council will also have to discuss the critically important question of our interaction with and impact on the student youth, the intelligentsia and the professionals in our country. All these constitute a critically important resource without which, in the context of the modern globalising economy and society, we cannot meet our objectives to help provide a better life for our people.

"We need to ensure that these strata in our society, that either have or will have the specialised skills our country needs, at the same time have the levels of national consciousness and patriotism that will enable our people to count on them as an asset for the development and modernisation of our country, for the benefit of the masses of our people."

As we celebrate Freedom Day on 27 April, we must again renew the pledge we made at the 2000 NGC and the 2002 National Conference that we would continue to build the ANC as an agent for change, and that we would mobilise our people also to act as agents for change, giving concrete meaning to our vision that the people must be their own liberators.

Policy Discussion Documents III

Need to speed up judicial transformation

Now more than ever, there is an urgent need to speed up the transformation of the judicial system and the administration of justice. This includes the creation of an effective and efficient judicial system responsive to the needs and aspirations of all South Africans, and a legitimate judiciary within a system of separation of powers with appropriate checks and balances.

Much has been achieved since the advent of democracy, but the judicial system envisaged by the Constitution has not yet been fully accomplished.

There are still separate procedures for the appointment of judges and magistrates and handling of complaints.

It is necessary to review the present system where the Supreme Court of Appeal exercises final appellate jurisdiction in respect of 'non-constitutional' matters, as there is no clear line distinguishing constitutional matters from 'non-constitutional' matters. The present system is burdensome and costly for most South Africans.

It is therefore necessary to move faster towards the creation of a single judiciary, as envisaged in the Constitution. In a single judicial system, judges and magistrates should be appointed and regulated by a uniform body of rules, standards and norms which recognises the hierarchy within the judiciary and the different conditions of appointment.

The Constitution converted the provincial and local divisions of the former Supreme Court into various high courts, but this defeats the purpose of a single judicial system. The policy discussion document on 'Transformation of the Judicial System' envisages the establishment of a single High Court constituted by the various divisions established at different seats in each province. This will enhance access to justice for people in remote areas of the country.

The document therefore proposes that a single High Court should be established with at least a division in each province and as many local divisions as are needed for the effective administration of justice.

Specialist courts need to be purpose-driven and enhance efficiency and expertise in the relevant area. Locating specialised courts within the court system will improve access to justice. But this needs to be balanced with the need for judicial officers to develop specialisation in certain fields of law.

Improving efficiency

The question of a representative judiciary is inter-linked with the creation of an efficient courts system. Unless the public develops confidence in the ability of the law and the judicial officers to protect them, the system can not be said to be efficient.

The delay in the finalisation of cases negatively impacts on access to justice. Progress already made needs to be improved upon. The infrastructure of the courts must be designed to promote access to courts. Many of our courts are still inaccessible to disabled people. Facilities, such as libraries, and security at the courts must be improved.

Government must assist the judiciary to investigate mechanisms to promote the representation of women judges. These measures must include making available appropriate training opportunities for law graduates and continuing legal education for women lawyers.

Before the current constitutional dispensation, magistrates courts were in effect part of the executive. Magistrates wielded enormous power and control over the lives of our people. Despite the location of the magistracy within the judiciary today, many of our people living in rural areas and in small towns complain about poor service, unnecessary postponements of cases, delays in the finalisation of cases, long distances which they must travel to courts, and racism and abuse at the hands of the judicial officers and other officials in the criminal justice system.

Branches of the ANC should take the lead in exposing and challenging pockets of racism and gender prejudice existing in the judicial system.

The situation would also be improved if magisterial districts were re-demarcated by changing the jurisdiction of courts in accordance with population demographics and the needs of society, and increasing the number of courts in rural areas to address the urban bias. There should be an incremental improvement in the capacity of all the courts to provide essential services to the community they intend to serve. Periodical courts, which were established at police stations and prisons for the convenience of the police and magistrates, should be phased out.

Administration of courts

An outstanding task relates to giving content to the principle of separation of powers. It is important to distinguish issues of policy making, budget and administration, which appropriately fall within the realm of the elected branches of government, and the administration of the adjudicative functions of the court, which fall within the realm of the judiciary.

The ANC should advance the principle of cooperative governance, which envisages a system where all branches of government work in collaboration with each other. At the same time, the Constitution firmly entrenches the principle of the separation of powers. To enhance access to justice and ensure efficiency in the administration of justice, it is important that the roles of each branch of government be carefully delineated. The ANC should ensure the existence of a legitimate and independent judiciary.

Policy and budgeting for courts and all matters relating to the administration of the justice system are the responsibility of the Minister of Justice. In carrying out this function, the minister is required to take into consideration the views of the judiciary in relation to matters which have a bearing on the proper functioning of the courts and the administration of justice.

The administration of all judicial and adjudicative functions falls within the judiciary, and the executive should not be allowed to interfere in such matters.

Access to justice

Central to the concept of justice in our constitutional state is the idea that ordinary citizens should not, for financial or other reasons, be unable to access courts. The Constitution guarantees access to courts and other independent tribunals or forums.

To enhance access to justice for ordinary citizens, simple and effective rules should be developed to govern the conduct of legal proceedings. This should be accompanied by the promotion of the use of all official languages, development of proper infrastructure, and decentralisation of administration of justice services. Magistrates and judges should be adequately equipped to understand the Constitution, and the values, aspirations and traditions of all the people.

The provision of quality legal services to the poor cannot be achieved by government acting alone. It is important that government engages with institutions which represent legal practitioners to explore ways of extending legal services to the poor. Government must also encourage the transformation of the legal profession in a manner that facilitates access to legal services. Government must strengthen the legal aid system and together with other relevant stakeholders work towards making the system more efficient.

Every litigant has a right to use their own language in all matters. At present, the state provides interpretation services in criminal cases. The state must investigate means of providing interpretation services in civil matters. The policy on language of record should be reviewed. Institutions of language development should be used to promote multilingualism, including languages not provided for in the Constitution.

Government must investigate means to promote the use of sign language in court. Communicative competence in at least one indigenous language should be considered for introduction as a requirement for qualification for an undergraduate law degree.

Juvenile justice

The present system of dealing with child offenders is inadequate in many respects. Places of safety also have not been functioning optimally. It is necessary therefore to review the current legislative framework and practices relating to child offenders. Government must urgently implement the Child Justice Bill.

The gains made since 1994 in the transformation of the judiciary represents only the beginning of a long and protracted struggle for full emancipation.
In this era, it is critical to marshal all progressive forces behind the vision of the ANC. Transformation as envisaged by the Constitution is, after all, in the national interest of all South Africans.

** This is the third in a series of articles summarising the main points covered in the policy discussion documents distributed as part of preparations for the ANC 52nd National Conference.

More Information:

• ANC Policy Discussion Documents, March 2007

White identity in a changing SA

Part II: This shouldn't happen to a white

Last week, we began a five part review of the book, "Whiteness Just Isn't What it Used to Be - White Identity in a Changing South Africa," by University of Cape Town academic, Melissa Steyn. In last week's review, we discussed the first of five narratives of "whiteness" - 'Still colonial after all these years.'

This week, we discuss the second narrative, 'This shouldn't happen to a white'. As we said last week, 'This shouldn't happen to a white' is a narrative still deeply rooted in the belief of white supremacy. It is a self destructive narrative of times gone by, clinging onto a system that has never had any socio-political integrity.

In this week's review, we analyse some of the assumptions this narrative appears to be based on, how these assumptions appear to impel the narrators to cling to whiteness at all costs, their economic motive, the discursive tools they may employ in defence of their economic objectives and how its purveyors sink into cynicism and gloom as the signs of inevitable failure stares them in the face, from the very depths of irrationality, the politically unimaginable.

In the end, their pretensions towards 'ownership' keep them hostage to a permanent season of fear in the mistaken belief that transformation is reducible and will be reduced to revenge.

We conclude by posing two questions: "Should this happen to a human being?"
and "Could this happen to a white?"

'Whiteness is ownership of the earth'

In the recesses of their psyches, white supremacists firmly believe, as WEB Du Bois analysed, that "Whiteness is ownership of the earth".

One of the all too often successful aims of racism has been to ensure that both black and white people remain strangers to one another, who must never know one another. This partly explains why the narrators of 'This shouldn't happen to a white' regard existing economic relations as unrelated to past policies that continue to determine the socio-economic exclusion of the majority.

Steyn reminds us that apartheid South Africa's isolation from the international community and "government's manipulation of the media to obfuscate the real consequences of their policies, increasingly screened whites from contrary interpretations of their society". She adds: "Enabled by economic and political advantage, hundreds of everyday trivia reinforced the sense of white superiority in a self-fulfilling manner."

These apartheid schemata have added to a "determined ignorance of whites", with the word "ignore" deeply embedded within "ignorance."

And so, one of the narrators of 'This shouldn't happen to a white,' a horticulturist, says: "They [black people] think that everything gets served on a silver platter and that white people didn't work hard in order to achieve what they have achieved. Nonwhites are being treated with a 'poor hard-done-by' attitude and literally being handed job opportunities, as for an example, on a silver platter."

A secretary says: "Blacks want to have what we have, but in a shorter time and without the skills and the knowledge that took years to obtain." In short, Whiteness is clung to at all costs: whites must remain whites.

'Tamper not with our [white] form of existing'

Indeed, this narrative is most vocal against measures of economic redress aimed at empowering previously disadvantaged people in our society. It seeks to protect racial privilege, "a certain form of existing," as Frantz Fanon said of the objective of racism. Redress is perceived as a violation of notions of a white form of existing. The natural form of existing, the very order of things, for them, is when whiteness means ownership of the earth.

For the whites who construct this narrative, the trouble begins when things leave the places their conception of whiteness allocates to them. This is when a white marketer, in spite of the fact that the economic advancement of black people is also in his interest, would rather "like to see affirmative action take a more natural infiltration into the system," adding that:
"There is no need for the forcefulness with which the mistakes of the past are trying to be corrected."

The white marketer, of course, sees no reason to explain what he means by "natural infiltration". In keeping with the secretary who evidently believes that hers is an exclusive vocation which only whites can grasp, the marketer believes that whites are where they are today because of qualities that are inherent to whiteness - not through the systematic policy measures of apartheid engineering which, as Steyn argues, required massive violence to enforce.

Clinging to a white form of existing requires further elaboration of the narrative.

'Reverse discrimination, retrogressive versus emancipatory identities and effortless osmosis'

One of the central pivots of this narrative is the opinionation that the democratic dispensation, through such policy measures as affirmative action, is implementing reverse racism, against whites. A school pupil contributes as follows in propagating the myth: "Nowadays, discrimination is against whites and no more against blacks very much." But as if her whiteness remains the only possession to ameliorate the discrimination she supposedly suffers, the school pupil adds, "but I am still glad to be white, simply because we are much more civilised than the black culture (they believe in witchcraft, etc)."

Claims such as the foregoing, asserts Steyn, give rise to "retrogressive white identities" as opposed to "emancipatory" [or emancipating] identities that are non-racial and inclusive in nature.

For purveyors of this myth, change, if it is to be permitted at all, must be effected through what Steyn calls "a kind of effortless osmosis", which could eventually bring black people to a level similar to that of whites.
The marketer and the secretary could take some comfort from this extension of the narrative.

The seemingly reasonable argument that our movement and government must abandon affirmative action in favour of merit, is made within a broad context of whiteness and specifically within the context of the narrative of 'These things shouldn't happen to whites'. The meritocracy proponents effectively are trying to sell to our movement and government the beguiling myth of effortless osmosis as the vehicle for socio-economic redress.

Peddlers of this myth, however, are refusing to accept that 1994 was but the beginning of a long and arduous road towards redressing three centuries of the racially systematic exclusion of the majority. In effect, they seek to deny our country and its citizens the possibility of shaping our own history by shaping our present and our future. In contrast with the hardened colonial discussed last week, this colonial is more dangerous for their ways are more artful, duplicitous and manipulative.

A narrative elaborated in terms of "reverse discrimination", "retrogressive"
as opposed to "emancipatory" identities, alongside the bait of "effortless osmosis" as the vehicle for change, cannot but be self-defeating.

More cynicism and gloom

As with the narrative 'Still colonial after these years', this narrative is likewise filled with cynicism and gloom. It holds no hope for the future, seeing the end result as unavoidably disastrous.

Here are some of its typical representations:

• South Africa is on a treadmill - going nowhere and therefore achieving nothing [medical technologist].
• Despite the political cant, ours will never be a truly democratic society.
  The tyranny of the [black] majority will devour individual genius, while mediocrity will be entrenched by a shaky constitution [lecturer].
• The life of a white in the new South Africa will be hell, for since the blacks have taken over the whole land, we have been set back and it is on the road to hell [high school pupil].

This narrative also pervades what may appear to be serious circles. Writing this Wednesday in Business Day, RW Johnson, makes the following remark about our government: "The state machine is collapsing and is run by an elite which doesn't care anyway..."

Ten years ago, in 1997, Johnson wrote of apartheid in the June edition of the London Prospect Magazine: "The big and virtually unspeakable truth is that, wicked and dreadful though it was, apartheid was, if seen in comparative perspective, a relatively mild historical experience. People were shoved around, bullied and deprived of rights, not allowed to live where they wanted, sometimes beaten up, often exploited and frequently
humiliated: all very horrible and inexcusable. But compared to, say, what has happened in Rwanda, or the Holocaust, or even with the almost casually atrocious and even genocidal policies typical of many colonial and slave-owning societies, apartheid was merely grossly insensitive and unkind social engineering."

We stop the citation at this point if only out of respect for our readers!

Steyn notes that this presentation of reality offers only "[withdrawal or fighting back]" with complete withdrawal being emigration, open only to the privileged. "For those who remain," she adds, "withdrawal entails narrowing one's life into a smaller realm of simple self-interest, minimal desires and anomie."

The lecturer quoted above says: "I am becoming increasingly cynical about the human condition in general."

Back in 2001, Steyn argued that: "It is conceivable that people who allow their minds to be shaped in this way may begin to engage in collective private violence, such as was known in the south of the United States." In South Africa, this is typified by the kind of racial violence that we have seen in incidents such as the death of a Nelson Chisale, the Limpopo farm worker who was thrown into a lion's den on the instructions of his employer, and the 11 year old child who was shot by a farmer who claimed that he mistook the child for a dog. Needless to say that he received a R20,000 fine (half suspended).

Steyn says adherents to 'This Shouldn't happen to a white' narrative, see the solution to their problems as only resolvable by "absolute gain or absolute loss". It is the viewpoint of the dog-eat-dog in which "resources need to be fought for, and one can only be firmly on top or utterly pulverised at the bottom." Whites are now at the unacceptable "bottom,"
which is erroneously equated to the suffering of "others" in the past.

The question of guilt and fear

'This Shouldn't happen to a white', the present narrative of our review, is also driven by an innate fear which arises, in part, out of guilt for the crimes visited upon the majority over centuries.

The process of transformation is therefore defined and feared as a process of revenge. A farmer expresses this sentiment as follows: "I attribute present changes to revenge for whatever happened in the past disguised as redistribution and equal opportunity." He stresses that: "White is now perceived as an object of revenge. We (black people) will try to do to them (white people) what they did to us." In reluctant qualification, the farmer
continues: "A lot of changes can be justified, but if the changes are perceived as punishment or revenge, then I would not like the changes to continue."

The constant reference to "revenge" suggests a queer acknowledgment of the crimes of the past but which the farmer is neither ready nor equipped to engage with constructively. This deeply laden fear seems to inform a variety of issues concerning public discourse, such social challenges as may include crime.

Should this happen to a human being?

Vho-Mukumela Tshivhula (92) passed away on 27 January this year. Her funeral was supposed to have taken place on 3 February at a farm outside the Limpopo town of Louis Trichardt (Makhado) where she has lived with her family since the 1930s.

Thirteen members of her family, including her late husband are buried on the farm. The new farm owners however intervened through their lawyers and refused the family permission to inter her remains.

Through the assistance of the Limpopo Provincial Department of Land Affairs, the family challenged the farm owners and brought the matter to the Land Claims Court. The Court found in favour of the farm owner, saying Vho-Mukumela could not be buried "without the consent and co-operation of the [farm owner]". The family has lodged an appeal.

In a statement issued this week, the ANC Women's League, said, among other things, the Tshivhula family has "endured humiliation, harassment and loss of human dignity over the past two and half months ...."

The right to a burial is not that clear cut after all.

Our movement has and will always respect the judgements of our judiciary.
The question - Should this happen to a human being - we posed when we began narrating the Tshivhula family tragedy and the one we pose yet again below is therefore not a legal one. They are moral questions in the context of the narrative 'This shouldn't happen to a white'.

Could this happen to a white?

** "Whiteness Just Isn't What it Used to Be - White Identity in a Changing South Africa", by Melissa Steyn: State University of New York Press, Albany, NY. 2001

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