The issue of race rears its head at every available opportunity, and yet in many (most?) cases it is used as a means of identifying a group which may in fact have little to do specifically with race.
To quote Professor Barney Pityana: ‘race is an artificial construct that should not play a role in our country’s future’.
The latest case concerns Judge Mandlenkosi Motha who recently questioned the issue of racial representation in the legal fraternity. In particular, he queried why there were no black lawyers involved in a case about black economic empowerment. He assumed that the lawyers involved were ‘white’ without actual evidence, and probably done purely on the basis of looks.
The question then is: is that rational, and what are the implications?
As obvious examples, both ex-presidents FW de Klerk and Paul Kruger were descendants of slaves, so in the nature of race classification they were both ‘coloureds’, or in more general terms ‘black’.
To take that further, they should then both be members of the BLM – ‘black lives matter’ – grouping, since that specifically incorporates descendants of slaves. Imagine what it would do for the psyche of South Africa if the BLM, including the descendants of the De Klerks and Krugers, could join the residents of Orania in celebrating the 200th anniversary of the birth of Kruger next year. By his statue in Church Square in Pretoria!
Concerned
But to get back to the question of race. Undoubtedly Judge Motha was concerned about the economic development of people he would define as ‘black’ from their looks and without any evidence of what he actually meant. Which is understandable, since that is the manner in which the apartheid government discriminated against the majority of South African citizens.
But is it actually right? Moreover, what are the consequences?
Even a brief look at history will show that people want to belong to groups, and that such groups are not necessarily based on race. In fact, some of the most intense conflicts between different groups are not concerned with race at all. As recent examples, the ‘Troubles’ in Ireland involved Protestants and Catholics – both Christians sects. Similarly, the Sunni and Shiites – both Islam – have been killing each other for centuries. What about the Tutsi genocide by the Hutus in Rwanda, and Robert Mugabe’s Shona Gukurahundi massacre of the Ndebele in Zimbabwe?
In any case, identifying a person’s race is not necessarily a straightforward exercise. There is no official document, be it ID book, passport, or driver’s licence which identifies the race of the holder. In the last census race was self-identifying, i.e. everyone could decide for themselves whether they were black, coloured, white, Indian and there was also the choice of ‘other’.
There is also a perception that the people of Africa can somehow be considered as a particular grouping. However, even a brief look at history will show that the continent has as much diversity as any other place on our planet – there are no cultural, ethnic, religious, racial or other characteristic that can define a person as an ‘African’.
Certainly the people of north Africa have a greater association with southern Europe and the middle East than they have with sub-Saharan Africa. They have been mixing for millennia – think of the Pharaohs, the Moors, Phoenicians, Carthage, etc. The trans-Saharan slave trade also traded West African slaves to the Berber and Arabic states of North Africa.
Further south
Farther south the Arab slave trade carried on down the east coast of Africa for more than a thousand years, and there was contact with the peoples of India, China and the Middle East for many centuries before the Europeans came. From around 1 100 years ago the Shashe-Limpopo basin emerged as a major player in the trading, superseded around 1300 by Greater Zimbabwe, with abundant signs of trade through the East African coast.
With the extensive trade in people and goods continuing, over these centuries people from many different regions of the world would have mixed their genes. In particular, it is very likely that many of those present-day fighters who run around South Africa in their red colonial berets have ancestry in the Middle East, India, and China.
About 2 000 years ago the pastoral Khoikhoi moved into southwestern southern Africa, joining the hunter-gatherer San people who had been there for many centuries. There was intermixing between these different groups, and the National Geographic Genographic Project lists the Khoisan as a reference population group containing perhaps some of the oldest populations in Africa. They have a unique genetic pattern that sets them apart from most other African groups, but even here there is a 3% origin listed in Southern Asia.
When the European nations brought in their settlers, over the next 350 years the intermixing of different groups continued. A new language – Afrikaans – developed and is spoken as a home language by some 13.5% of the South African population; this is not much less than the 16% that speak Xhosa as a homelanguage, with only Zulu speakers numbering more.
Descendants
The majority of Afrikaners are descendants of the Khoisan, and peoples from Europe, Asia, and the Middle East. This is confirmed by the names of the Sarah Baartman district municipality and the Dawid Stuurman International Airport – good Afrikaans names recognised and proposed by Khoisan descendants.
So then, why is Judge Motha concerned about so-called ‘white’ lawyers? While it is undeniably true that such racist assessments have tainted much of South Africa’s history, surely it is time to actually assess the individual people involved?
But more importantly, what group is Judge Motha favouring? While transformation is essential in South Africa to provide opportunity to all, should that be done specifically in terms of a perceived racial prejudice? It is an accepted fact that BEE policies have not advanced the well-being of the majority of South Africans, but rather favoured specific groups within what is termed the ‘black’ group.
In fact, the ‘black grouping’ is generally taken to be broader, including so-called ‘coloureds’ and ‘Indians’. That is reasonable, since they all suffered under the yoke of apartheid.
In the end it is surely necessary to heed the words of Professor Pityana, and to first and foremost treat people as individual human beings. To identify specific groups for special treatment leads to the danger of ‘groupthink’, where a group of people reaches consensus without critical reasoning. The result of that would be to apportion privileges to that group, without considering the consequences. That is what the apartheid government did, and is now what BEE and the ANC government are implementing.
The views of the writer are not necessarily the views of the Daily Friend or the IRR
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