Returning the “We”

A conversation with a white South African today may sound perfectly ordinary. A greeting in a supermarket passage, a polite “Merry Christmas, Ma’am,” perhaps. Yet beneath the pleasantries sits a more awkward question: Do we actually see one another?

South Africa has a word for recognition: Sawubona — “I see you.” It is more than a greeting; it is an acknowledgement of another person's existence and humanity. But South Africa's history makes such recognition complicated. For centuries, whiteness occupied the country as ruler, outsider and interloper, while everyone else was expected to understand their place.

So when a white woman is called “Ma'am” rather than “Mama” or “Miss”, the language itself raises an uncomfortable question: Who are you, what are you, and when did you become part of the “we”?

The answer is not found in skin colour alone. It lies in history; particularly the history of land, race and belonging. South Africa was never simply a collection of racial categories, though apartheid helpfully attempted to turn humanity into a filing system: White, Indian, Black, Coloured, Khoisan and Asian.

And having created these categories, the country then spent decades fighting over who was entitled to what.

South Africa was once presented to the world as a country of enormous promise. Today, it often resembles a magnificent house in which everyone is arguing over who broke the furniture. Race, sexism, inequality and social division have become convenient explanations for almost everything.

Perhaps the real problem is simpler: we inherited a country that was never designed to belong equally to everyone, and then congratulated ourselves when we changed the constitution.

That is progress, certainly. But constitutions, unlike politicians, cannot repair potholes.

the american mirror

Looking at the United States offers another uncomfortable comparison.

America has historically required Black Americans to confront racism; South Africa, by contrast, still appears to require white South Africans to confront the privileges and prejudices attached to whiteness.

Neither country has perfected the exercise.

American politics has turned race, identity and belonging into permanent electoral currency. Republicans and Democrats quarrel over who owns the moral high ground, while ordinary citizens are left wondering whether the high ground comes with parking.

Money complicates the argument further. Wealth is routinely presented as proof of individual’s success, while racial inequality is discussed as though everyone began the race from the same starting line.

They did not.

Capitalism says: I earned it.

Communism says: We earned it.

History replies: You inherited quite a lot of it.

And somewhere between those three statements sits South Africa.

the norwegian solution

Then there is Norway, a country often held up as an example of social trust, ethical government and functioning institutions.

Perhaps this explains the fascination with the Norwegian television series Skam. Its appeal was not merely entertainment. It presented young people negotiating identity, morality, friendship and society at a time when the world was changing rapidly.

Our South Africa could use a little of that.

Not necessarily the Norwegians themselves; although importing a few functioning institutions might not be the worst idea, but the principle that young people deserve a voice.

The trouble is that South Africa has developed an unusual habit of inviting young people to speak and then proceeding as though they had said nothing.

That is democracy with subtitles.

the politics of  inheritance

South Africa's political argument has increasingly become a contest over who gets to define the national “we”.

The Democratic Alliance frequently points to potholes and the failures of the African National Congress. The ANC points to history and inequality. Both sides are correct often enough to remain dangerous.

The Western Cape is frequently presented as evidence that government can work. Yet even paradise apparently has potholes. The same Western Cape still displays remnants of the recent past unfair system. Townships in the Province are still inhabited by those who were designated at the bottom of the social strata.

Meanwhile, the national government struggles with corruption, unemployment, inequality and debt.

And then there is the question of whiteness.

White South Africans are sometimes treated rhetorically as though they are simultaneously a powerful ruling class and a persecuted minority. It is a remarkable political achievement to occupy both positions at once.

History, however, does not disappear simply because the political vocabulary changes.

Apartheid divided South Africans by race and ethnicity, encouraging communities to distrust one another. The genius of such a system was its simplicity: keep everyone busy fighting each other and nobody has time to ask who designed the battlefield.

The legacy remains.

mandela, history and the wider world

Nelson Mandela understood something that South African politics repeatedly forgets: a country cannot be rebuilt by humiliating half its population; even when that half is statistically just 7.5%.

His imprisonment became a symbol of resistance, just as Mahatma Gandhi's imprisonment became part of the history of India's struggle.

Mandela's political vision extended beyond South Africa. His solidarity with Palestinians reflected his belief that liberation could not be selective.

The broader lesson is uncomfortable but important: human progress means progress for more than one's own tribe, race, party or nation.

South Africa therefore occupies an unusual position. It speaks loudly about human rights while struggling quietly with its own contradictions.

It condemns injustice abroad while tolerating inequality at home.

It celebrates democracy while watching institutions deteriorate.

It invokes Ubuntu while behaving as though everybody else is the problem.

Perhaps this is what happens when history refuses to leave the room.

enter the mafia

And now, finally, the Mafia.

Popular culture gave us The Sopranos, where organised crime could be disguised as respectable business, provided everyone agreed not to ask too many questions.

South Africa, of course, has no shortage of respectable institutions that occasionally behave like they have misplaced the distinction between public service and private interest.

The metaphor is irresistible.

The country has a Constitution regarded as one of the world's strongest, yet corruption and political patronage repeatedly make constitutional ideals look like expensive wallpaper.

Helen Zille and the Democratic Alliance have become prominent symbols in arguments about race, whiteness and political power. Critics see an old racial order attempting to reinvent itself as modern liberalism. Supporters see a political movement challenging a failing governing party.

Both interpretations cannot be entirely false.

South Africa's great political trick is that everyone claims to be the victim.

The ANC says apartheid left an unfinished revolution.

The DA says the ANC destroyed the country.

The EFF says capitalism stole the country.

Everyone agrees somebody stole something.

The disagreement is over who had the keys!

the president as influencer

Then there is the modern presidency.

President Cyril Ramaphosa increasingly appears, in this journalist’s argument, as something around president, spokesperson, ambassador, crisis manager and national influencer.

Why appoint five people when one president can do the work of all five?

Why dismiss a minister when you can place them on paid leave?

Why delegate responsibility when you can appear on television and explain everything yourself?

The modern political leader is expected to be everywhere: at funerals, conferences, national dialogues, international summits and television cameras.

One almost wonders when there is time left to govern.

The irony is delicious.

The office is called ‘His Excellency’.

The complaint is that excellence is precisely what is missing.

The G20 became another stage for the performance. South Africa wanted to speak for Africa, while ordinary South Africans reasonably asked whether their own government could first speak for them.

Africa has 55 countries and more than a billion people.

South Africa has roughly 60 million.

The President may understandably wish to speak for the continent. But perhaps the people paying the electricity bills would prefer him to begin with them.

Because patriotism is not a speech.

It is a job.

The Great “We”

And so we return to the word that began this argument: “We.”

Who is the “we”?

Is it the white South Africans who arrived generations ago and now consider this home?

Is it the Black South Africans whose ancestors were here before the borders existed?

Is it the Indian South Africans whose history is intertwined with colonialism and migration?

Is it the Coloured South Africans whose identity was manufactured and manipulated by apartheid?

Is it the immigrant?

The poor?

The billionaires?

The farmers?

The unemployed graduates?

The politicians?

The citizens watching all of them argue on television?

South Africa's Constitution says the country belongs to all who live in it.

That should settle the matter.

But history rarely reads constitutions.

The danger is that South Africans continue to define themselves primarily through opposition: Black against white, the rich against the poor, the rural against the urbanites, ANC against DA, nationalists against liberals.

Meanwhile, poverty remains indifferent to ideologies.

Unemployment does not care which party won.

A pothole does not vote.

Corruption has no ethnicity.

And hunger does not recognise political slogans.

The greatest irony is that South Africans have spent so much time arguing about who belongs to the “we” that we have neglected to build a country in which everyone can actually belong.

Perhaps the Mafia is not a group of sinister outsiders.

Perhaps the Mafia is the system we have created; one in which everyone knows something is wrong, everyone blames somebody else, and everyone insists they are merely an innocent bystander.

The final joke, therefore, may be on all of us.

Because the Constitution says “We, the people”.

Not them.

Not us.

Not those people.

We.

And if South Africa cannot rediscover what that word means, the country may continue having elections, conferences, commissions, summits and national dialogues forever; while the people remain outside the room.

That would be a very South African tragedy:

a nation arguing endlessly about who owns the house while the roof is leaking on everybody.