The Soapbox | Where South Africans Speak Out

BY HLANGANANI GUMBI

E.TV’s 3rd Degree show and post debate on 3rd Degree Plus on 25th May 2010 centred around racism and left one deeply saddened at the entrenched racism in our society. The show covered a number of incidents from the effects of the AWB Leader Eugene Terre’blanche murder, to the both previous and recent incidents at the University of the Free State (UFS). It is the ethnic nationalism which was witnessed on the show that left one with the greatest lesson of them all: We must rid our society of ethnic nationalism and promote unity.

In one clip during the show, host Debora Patta at the University of the Free State proceeds to question the campus Freedom Front Plus (FF+) Youth Leader about the nature of racism on campus, and further goes on to accuse her of being a racist. The young female leader turns to tears as she tries to explain her “nonracist” character. But what was really interesting is her tendency to promote ethnic nationalism through her party, and left me unable to refrain from addressing this issue for once and for all.

What the FF+ Youth Leader fails to understand is that she belongs to an ethnic nationalist party whose policy is based on the development of a separate homeland to preserve that ethnicity. The FF+ is no less an ethnic nationalist party than the AWB because they both stand to preserve their ethnicity using the smokescreen of culture maximisation as has been seen by both AWB Secretary-General Andre Visagie, and FF+ Leader Pieter Mulder in many instances. Ethnic nationalism places the interests of one group of people over that of the rest of the populace. That is why it breeds racism, and causes divisions. It is the root cause of all the suffering in our history, and that in many parts of the world.

South Africa today must find every means to reject ethnic nationalism and promote unity. This immediately starts with rejecting organisations which promote it. The FF+ and AWB are some of the most forthright ethnic nationalist parties today. The IFP, perhaps on paper does not promote ethnic nationalism, but it certainly cannot be said to be a party accommodative of all people, and leaves one to wonder whether they have a single Xhosa within their senior party ranks considering the social divide amongst Xhosas and Zulus.

The South African electorate needs to reject all these parties as an act against ethnic nationalism. The African National Congress (ANC) is also a party which does not promote unity amongst people adequately. The ANC promotes racial representation within its party and government in an attempt to correct the injustice of the past. The idea that only blacks can represent blacks, and only whites can represent whites et cetera. This is the same approach favoured by Verwoerd in his day and the ANC today, and we must reject it. We must always remain vigilant that, in our attempts to address the legacy of the past, we don’t fall into the trap of seeing people simply as representatives of racial groups. This is precisely what we need to leave behind in our country. Racial representation or even ethnic representation serves more as a barrier to unity than a bridge because it instils a sense of racial ethnic responsibility to promote one’s identity to that group and hence becomes another form of ethnic nationalism.

The Democratic Alliance (DA) on the other hand, is the only party which is truly becoming a party for all. Unlike the ANC, the DA does not believe in groups of people, but in individuals, and groups of individuals. We believe that all individuals are equal both in worth and dignity. The DA is a party which is for blacks, whites, Indians and coloureds. It is for Zulus, Xhosas, Sotho’s, Tswana’s, Afrikaners, Swati’s, Ndebele’s, Venda’s et cetera. The DA is a national entity which swings far beyond the narrow objects of ethnic nationalism, to a party which promotes a single nation. That is why the DA promotes the slogan of “One Nation, One Future”. It is the only party which has earned that right to do so.

The DA believes strongly in the value of diversity and sharing if we are to build a united South Africa. During apartheid, the government refused to share South Africa with all whom resided in it and sought to eliminate diversity through separate development. In the DA we reject this, and promote entirely the opposite. Diversity in comparison to racial ethnic representation is about bringing in decision-making people of wide-ranging experiences and perspectives, without assuming that people can only be represented by others of the same colour or gender.

Ethnic nationalism is an implicit threat to driving South Africa into a passage of continued racism, and plants the seeds of division which we once before sought strongly to remove. We must bring back that spirit by rejecting ethnic nationalism in all forms, and promoting diversity and sharing. The AWB, FF+, and ANC do not stand for these ideals. Only the DA does.

Hlanganani Gumbi is provincial youth chairperson of the Eastern Cape DA.