Reconciliation without justice
2009-10-25 14:00
HOW do we explain the strange behaviour of a black university head who is hired to transform a racist institution but ends up inviting back white students accused of racist behaviour?
Prof Jonathan Jansen initially got support for his “brave” move from influential quarters including some university “stakeholders” such as Sasco and a cabinet minister who attended his over-the-top induction ceremony, where he announced his “gesture of racial reconciliation”.
Our beloved Archbishop Desmond Tutu wrote an open letter to Prof Jansen to “salute” and “commend” him for his act of forgiving and dropping charges against the four white students who cajoled black workers to run around like mad animals and eat their piss and faeces while recording the sordid affair. Tutu declared Jansen “a great man”, and that he should “count me among your admirers”.
Further significant about Tutu’s show of public support is the link he drew between what Jansen did and what Nelson Mandela did in 1994. I think Tutu is correct on that score.
Jansen’s “magnanimous” gesture is consistent with the politics practised by Nelson Mandela and accepted by blacks, and continued by Mbeki and now Zuma. In the main, such politics demand of blacks to forgive and forget without getting restitution for the oppression and racism that happened here for more than 300 years. At best this can be described as reconciliation without justice. This politics focuses on reassuring the beneficiaries and perpetrators of racism that they have nothing to worry about, all is forgiven. The interests of the black victim are sidelined, as in the case of the black workers at University of Free State.
Jansen forgave the students without consulting the victims, thereby subjecting them to secondary victimisation.
The rector used his black skin to perpetuate black victimisation, only now as an act of reconciliation and good. How evil!
This politics normalises historical injustices against blacks. It’s a little like someone came to your house and dispossessed you of all your goods and threw you out into the street, now they demand that you reconcile with them while you are condemned to a life on the street and poverty and they enjoy the comfort of your home. This is what happened here in 1994 and is now dramatised by Jansen.
What I find hypocritical is the opportunism of the ANC and its allies, including Minister Blade Nzimande’s rebuking of Jansen. Of course the ANC has also declared its support of his vision of non- racialism. The good professor has done nothing which is not consistent with the post-1994 politics. In fact even if the four white students were to go all the way to court, they are only likely to end up with light fines. This means if you experience racial discrimination and violence because you are black, the police can’t open a case of racism; they call it something funny like crimen injuria. Yes, racism is not a crime in a country which has experienced 350 years of racism.
As long as blacks remain a powerless numerical majority there is no hope that white racism will end. No one has yet asked this simple question: Why did the workers allow themselves to be abused in this manner by white children? That racism is allowed to flourish, including being rewarded, is not the problem of whites. It is a demonstration of the psychological oppression of blacks who continue to give power to whites, with assistance from such men as Mandela, Tutu and Jansen.
On October 31 at 3pm the fourth edition of New Frank Talk is launched in Newtown Kospotong. Chinweizu will talk from Accra about power and true freedom for Africa.
)Mngxitama is the publisher of New Frank Talk
- City Press