Those who argue that black people involved in racial incidents should be treated more leniently than whites risk degrading the generous, ennobling universalism of human rights.
There is probably nothing that so enrages and inflames South African society than an instance of racism. It resurrects agonising memories of the country’s past, and strikes deeply at its present sense of self. And it tears us as citizens apart and sets us against one another.
This has long been the case. And, as a consequence of aversion to racism, human rights have come to offer the country a robust counter-ideology. Racism cannot be reconciled with human rights. Indeed, as South Africa’s own history demonstrates, racism provided fertile ground for rights violations. If anything, it made them inevitable.
Human rights have been central to the official narrative of post-apartheid South Africa. They are an answer to the distressing propensity of human beings to abuse and subjugate their peers. Above all, human rights are entitlements to which all human beings may lay claim by virtue of their humanity. Nothing less. They assume a transcendental equality among people that cannot be compromised.
So the recent comments of a representative of the South African Human Rights Commission (SAHRC) were jarring.
Speaking during a briefing on a controversial case involving Gauteng Sports MEC Faith Mazibuko, SAHRC Deputy Chairperson Priscilla Jana confirmed that it was the institution’s position that black people involved in racial incidents should be treated more leniently than whites. This was ‘because of the historical context’.
MEC Mazibuko had been reported to the commission following a rant in which she had belittled white and Indian staff members, saying that they should thank her for their positions – the implication being that their race counted against their employment. Deputy Chair Jana commented that these might be ‘interpreted’ as racist, but they were in reality merely ‘divisive’.
That a senior official at an institution charged with protecting and promoting human rights (and one funded by, and answerable to, the population as a whole) should take this position beggars belief. If veers perilously close to abandoning the pretence of universality – a consideration without which human rights cannot exist.
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, probably the most visionary and widely accepted exposition of what human rights mean, puts it thus: ‘Everyone is entitled to all the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration, without distinction of any kind, such as race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status. Furthermore, no distinction shall be made on the basis of the political, jurisdictional or international status of the country or territory to which a person belongs, whether it be independent, trust, non-self-governing or under any other limitation of sovereignty.’
In anti-racism activism, there can simply be no justification for differentiating between the protection afforded to one person’s rights and those of another, at least not if human rights constitute the conceptual framework.
But an objection to racism need not be grounded in human rights.
Racism may be rejected not because it violates the idea of the intrinsic worth of all people (the human rights postulate), but because it violates a sectarian sense of dignity. In the latter case, it is less the essential assumptions behind racist thinking – the notion that some are superior and some inferior – that gives offence than the fact that it is targeted at a given group. Or that it originates from a particular source.
On the face of it, there is an element of this thinking in Deputy Chair Jana’s remarks. True, she is not (necessarily) saying that racism from black people does not exist, or is to be ignored. But she is qualifying the sanctions imposed on its perpetrators, and by implication, the protection afforded to its various victims. This cannot be reconciled with the universalist approach to combating racism that a human rights framework would require.
She is by no means alone in doing this. Inasmuch as racism is a source of outrage, there is often a curious ambivalence and conditionality in confronting it. At its simplist, there are the numerous hypocrisies that exist in everyday action – illustrated nowhere better than in the nihilistic echo chambers on social media. Unpleasant, but by and large the detritus of societal frustrations and the exaggerated importance-overlaid-by-anonymity that technological platforms confer on unremarkable people.
Sometimes there are bigger and more meaningful stories, and revealing contrasts. South Africans will remember that early 2018 was marked by an uproar over an advertisement by Swedish clothing chain H&M, which depicted a black child in a garment with the legend ‘Coolest Monkey in the Jungle’. In South Africa, the response was swift, angry and destructive. Stores were ransacked, and images gleefully shared on social media, some bearing the caption: ‘The time of apologies for racism are over; there must be consequences to anti-black racism, period!’
Twitter accounts beat out an uncompromising staccato. Vusi Pikoli wrote that ‘the best thing for H&M is just to close down permanently all their stores in SA and just leave’. Later he added: ‘A line has to be drawn on racism! Dignity is an unlimited right in our Constitution. If we never acted before does not mean meek submission.’
Zwelinzima Vavi linked the advert to colonialism, and appeared to reject the suggestion that protest action remain measured: ‘Racists insult us by getting an innocent black child to wear a shirt declaring that he is a monkey! We condemn those protesting this insult telling them to be more peaceful and send petitions! History repeats itself. When land was taken we sent petitions to the Queen for years!’
The Ahmed Kathrada Foundation entered the fray, condemning the advert, and pointing to an incident a few years previously in which the company had not made use of black models in an advertising campaign. Announcing that H&M had agreed to a meeting, the Foundation continued: ‘We intend expressing why it is imperative that H&M’s directors, management and its marketing division, both globally and locally, undergo compulsory anti-racism and diversity training, so that there can be a change of attitude within the company around issues related to race.’
Uncompromising stuff.
Yet at around the same time, China Central Television (CCTV), the largest state broadcasting platform in China – and in a very real sense one of the most influential in the world – broadcast an eyebrow-raising skit as part of its Lunar New Year broadcast. Themed around Africa, and China’s relations with the continent, it featured a veritable freakshow of racist iconography: blackface, monkey imagery, prosthetics to accentuate grotesquely large buttocks and breasts. (Each of these elements has prompted a local explosion of outrage.) Not to mention some patronising dialogue about how much China has done for Africa…
Yet despite this story having been reported, despite the clip being available online, and despite CCTV having a bureau in South Africa, the response was conspicuous by its torpidity. Those who, paladin-like, had taken to social media and the passageways of malls to confront racism had little to say. The Ahmed Kathrada Foundation, which had earnestly sought to challenge H&M’s corporate culture made no matching challenge to CCTV – not even on the simian symbolism in its skit (though it had denounced H&M for on the grounds that the ‘image of a “monkey” has been used to racially demean black people for generations’.)
This contrast showed the acute sensitivity towards some manifestations of racism and the indifference towards others. But why?
Perhaps CCTV could be excused because it was seen as the mouthpiece of a fraternal socialist power? And an Asian society, and a country of the global ‘South’? Perhaps the charge of racism is – following Deputy Chair Jana’s reasoning – to be more fulsomely applied to certain perpetrators (real or perceived) than to others?
Ultimately, the reasons are relatively unimportant. That such differentiation exists raises grave concerns for all. Opposition to racism may be no expression of a generous, ennobling universalism, but merely the outgrowth of something inward-looking, narrow and selfish. It may even reflect an inability to empathise with those unlike ourselves. Or maybe it embodies a rank cynicism that merely appropriates the language of human rights while gutting the substance.
And perhaps that should warn us that, where we allow these ideas to be degraded and abused, fertile ground is created for the resurgence of pathologies. Maybe even racism itself.
Terence Corrigan is a project manager at the Institute of Race Relations.
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