Thabo Mbeki has upset a bunch of white people and I pity him because I’ve seen what happens when a distinguished black man confronts the power centres who determine race narratives. He’s written to the MEC for Education in Gauteng (copying a guy called Andrek Lesufi – sounds lovely) to remark on the non-racism event at Pretoria Girls High School in the middle of the year, making a series of recommendations.
He is clearly disgusted with the episode and has composed his feelings in the same manner with which he once shoved Winnie Mandela, with the same hostility he responded to eTV’s Imam Rapetti when she asked him about Jackie Selebi and with the same fury he expressed to the (then) Mail & Guardian’s Ferial Haffajee just before Christmas 2007 (“Do I look like I have horns?”)
Shame. He’s buggered. Every single cat spinster in Cape Town knows there’s racism at Pretoria Girls High School – every single white ‘anti-racist’ spaffing themselves blind during their little “anti-racist” weekly Zoom calls, furiously punching CapeTalk’s studio line number into their phones during John Maytham’s show, can locate racism under the floorboards of that place. Bloody thing is everywhere – the staff kettle, the curtains, hiding badly behind the bookshelves.
So, the logic of the “anti-racist” Atlantic Seaboard litter trays, the real authorities on this matter, swiftly concludes: Thabo Mbeki is an “anti-racist” sellout.
Anti-racist spasms
Back in 2020, events in Minnesota, approximately 6 000km away from the UK, panicked the country into “anti-racist” spasms. Bored, holed-up locals took to protests in parks and streets, demonstrating merciless intolerance to anyone who dared ask questions like, “what about that 2m rule?” or “why did they change Mr. Floyd’s autopsy so quickly?” In Bristol, a statue of a former slave owner was rolled off its mount and into the harbour water – in London, male police officers, knackered from spending the night before dancing in stilettos and blowing whistles – winced slowly down onto one knee before mobs. Everyone – politicians, television hosts, footballers, doctors – was suddenly kneeling and when then Prime Minister Boris Johnson saw all the kneeling, he shat himself.
But he was sober – luckily – and in his sobriety he did something few others were doing. He established the Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities, and to head it, he appointed a black man, which was wise but surprising as every other commission established by everyone else to investigate “racism” seemed to be appointing white women academics whose PhDs involved things like spoken word and tenuous but energetic attempts to prove that Christopher Columbus may – may – have been a bit on the queer side.
Johnson’s appointee was a legendary teacher called Tony Sewell who boasted a remarkable record of achieving excellent grades from youth in troubled school districts. Tony in turn did what nobody else was doing: he constituted the commission with Asian and black profiles and so here cat spinsters thought: if there’s one commission, or inquiry, that’s going to find so much racism in Britain – this is it (there was one white guy on the commission – his first name was Martyn).
Working groups
Tony’s commission got to work immediately. They tabled an arcing scope then divided into working groups. There was a thorough examination of publicly available information from the Office of National Statistics, then a thorough examination of not-so publicly available information, procured through interviews, online panel events, polls, and surveys. They analysed teaching materials and hiring practises, then precedent set by previous inquiries and reports.
The commission worked through the summer, then autumn, winter and on spring’s doorstep in March 2021, their report was published, prefaced with the statement: “the claim the country is still institutionally racist is not borne out by the evidence”.
You what? There must be an error, local cat spinsters stammered – surely the word “not” is a typo? Initial confusion quickly turned into rage: bring the effin’ experts in, it demanded. The experts, the vast majority of whom were white business, academic, media, or creative industry folk – who had, as is happens, just months before been experts on covid too – then augmented the fury, so you had an infinity loop of white indignation, despite none of these people having done any of the research.
One by one, offended, chinless white men spoke out their bottoms and offended, painfully thin, white women wagged their fingers – we reject this report – and they were too angry to be even a little cunning about it. They could have stalled or polluted the conclusion by asking smarmy questions – for example, “are you telling us not to believe our own eyes?” – but ultimately that would have been neutered by the fact that no impediments exist to the opening of bank accounts or enrolling in schools or hospital admissions.
White expert class
So, with the white expert class despairing, the report went to Parliament. As the young minister Kemi Badenoch defended its integrity, white profiles in opposition parties attacked it, and a spectacle unfolded of a black woman defending the work of a black man and a largely non-white commission – against white people melting down about white people. We whites are awful! No, you’re not that bad. We whites are abhorrent murdering savages! Calm down, the United Kingdom has laid adequate foundations for upward social mobility for people of colour – its working class white kids who are performing worst in schools…so…maybe…um….We deserve to kill ourselves! Please don’t…your cats would have no one to bore them to sleep at night.
The session ended but the hostility accompanied the incandescent whites outside; by their expressions, you could see they were trying to figure out a way to use their vape batteries to set themselves on fire.
That’s how it goes I’m afraid, Thabo. You’ve picked a fight with the race hustler industrial complex you were instrumental in lighting up from its once-cottage industry status [see: SAHRC, Racism in SA Media, 1999]. Now they are going to call you mad and bitter. Privileged. Soon you’ll be forced to sit in workshops financed by the taxpayer, carry home mountains of “resources”. Really, you should have known better.
The views of the writer are not necessarily the views of the Daily Friend or the IRR.
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Image by Samir Basante Valencia from Pixabay