19 Nov 2013 | Tony Leon | Original Publication: BDlive
Recent debates are reminders
that we prefer our politics to be binary and eschew complexity and nuance by
slapping labels on views we most dislike, writes Tony Leon
JEANE Kirkpatrick, the US liberal democrat, became a political apostate,
when, in 1980, her fierce detestation of communism led her to embrace
Republican presidential candidate Ronald Reagan, in whose cabinet she would
later serve.
Kirkpatrick was not overfussed about being labelled. Despite migrating
from a youthful embrace of the Socialist Party of America to a middle-age
conversion to the conservative cause, she shrugged off attempts to pigeonhole
her ideologically: "Labels in politics are like parsley on a dinner plate
— decorative but not nourishing."
She would, however, have had a hard swim in our waters had she been born
in, say, Deneysville, Free State, rather than in Duncan, Oklahoma. Recent
debates here are reminders that we prefer our politics to be binary and eschew
complexity and nuance by slapping labels on the views and voices we most
dislike. It’s not simply a matter of prejudice; it also has the convenience of
closing down a debate before it has properly begun by suggesting bad faith or
irrevocable bias on the part of certain participants.
Ironically, this week we celebrate the attainment of the constitutional
settlement at Kempton Park 20 years ago. The chief architect of the bridge
constructed there was Cyril Ramaphosa. Yet, just last week, the avatar of the
nonracial and equal democracy with which his name and contribution will be
associated forever, struck a very different and discordant chord.
Campaigning in Limpopo, Ramaphosa warned: "If you don’t vote, the
Boers will come back to control us." This all-purpose swipe against all
opponents of his African National Congress, without nuance, presumably embraces
everyone from Julius Malema to Pieter Mulder. He later clarified this remark,
explaining he meant it as a reference to "former apartheid
oppressors", not to whites or Afrikaners as a group.
Just as the wells of nonracial co-operation built at Kempton Park were
being spiked, the government announced that Robert McBride was the best
qualified person in South Africa to be head of the Independent Police
Investigation Directorate. The opposition spokeswoman on police, Dianne Kohler
Barnard, noted that she had voted in favour of the previous incumbent,
nominated by the same government, "as his legal qualifications were
impeccable, added to which he had an uncontroversial and upstanding
reputation". She then pointed out that in order to panel-beat the
qualifications for the post to meet McBride’s lack of qualifications, "the
crucial legal qualification necessary for (this) post had been excised from the
job advertisement". Instead of explaining this striking omission or
dealing with the serial controversies that have attached to McBride since 1994,
his defenders followed the less nuanced or complex route. Two public servants
"writing in their personal capacities", Busani Ngcaweni and Vusi
Mona, did not bother with rebutting such bothersome technicalities. They simply
averred that opponents of the ill-starred McBride "want to hold onto white
privilege".
I then reread Kohler Barnard’s critique and could not find a single
direct or implied reference to McBride’s race in it. No matter, her critics
will cry, it is her racial origins that count, and condemn her views to the
bin.
Correctly, we measure the mountains of progress achieved since the
dramatic final days at Kempton Park 20 years ago. But far less visible there
than Ramaphosa and other designers of our new order was the quietly spoken and
intellectually towering legal academic, Etienne Mureinik. Many of the clauses
in our bill of rights owe their provenance to him. Sadly, he committed suicide
in August 1996, so he never witnessed the signing of the final constitution by
Nelson Mandela.
But months before he died, at the University of the Witwatersrand,
Mureinik was embroiled in a row over the fitness for office of William Makgoba,
at the time a deputy vice-chancellor. The details are perhaps less important
than the terms of engagement in that now largely forgotten debate. However,
with his pioneering writing and brave advocacy during apartheid, Mureinik could
not be defined, on Ramaphosa’s version at least, as a "Boer". He did
far more to rebut the oppressive old order than many others. But he was white.
Makgoba dismissed Mureinik and his fellow critics "as a typical group of
racists". Mureinik’s response was both instructive and eerily predictive
of the whirlwind to come. He called it "stigma labelling". He wrote:
"A white person who dares to question a black person’s credentials will
automatically be called ‘a racist’, a label which makes one a moral criminal,
and consigns one to the nonworld of those who can safely be ignored."
But while it might silence the debate, what does this do to the
constitutional order? Once again, Mureinik suggested, it removed the essential
pillar on which the entire construction rested: "It destroys any hope of
equal accountability." Perhaps in the war of words, we sometimes destroy
better than we know.
• Leon is the author of The Accidental
Ambassador (Pan Macmillan). Follow him on Twitter: @TonyLeonSA OR on Facebook: facebook.com/TonyLeonSA
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