The latest of sport, arts and culture minister Gayton McKenzie's controversies serves as a reminder that South Africa's struggle with racism is not an apartheid hangover, but an ongoing moral and political challenge. Its core is a tough question: who can be racist, and what is racism? McKenzie is accused of having used apartheid-era racial insults against black people in an earlier social media post.
He denies this, describing it as a politically motivated insult. As part of his defence, he refers to his ethnic background, friendships and anti-prejudice activism against coloured South Africans, and goes on to defend that racism does entail a “victim” in the immediate sense, a person on whom prejudice is exercised. This is an appealing but flawed argument. Racism in educational and legal settings is not merely a personal slur or an interpersonal insult.
Racism is the intersection of power and prejudice, the deployment of privilege built into society to debase or exclude others based on race. Use of hate speech, particularly those words previously used to dehumanise, carries the full weight of systemic oppression, used jokingly, in anger, or to troll. That weight is not dissipated simply because the perpetrator happens to be part of a marginalised group. South African constitutional democracy recognises that anybody can perpetrate racism.
The white supremacist's historic architecture still shapes the institutions of the nation, but anybody, irrespective of background, has access to racist attitudes or rhetoric, particularly when directed against groups already marginalised by that structural inequality. Therefore, the power of racism is not so much whether it's those who own or control the economy or state, but whether it's those calling upon historically hurtful language and the social narratives that entrench disunity. McKenzie's defenders claim his revived tweets are well over a decade old and reflect nothing of his opinions now.
He takes responsibility for previous “insensitive, stupid, and hurtful” tweets, apologising and offering to subject himself to investigation. Apologies, though, in these circumstances are not PR ceremonies; they are an acknowledgment that words, especially ones soaked in the linguistic armoury of apartheid, cause pain across generations. They reiterate that language is never unbiased; it is a medium for common memory. The minister's critics including the EFF, ATM and ActionSA insist that the role he plays demands more from him.
Moving on from the premise of this issue having caused public outrage and racial discomfort, we equally acknowledge his denial of the allegations until proven otherwise. Whatever the outcome, the conversation remains the same: racism is wrong.
A portfolio that strives for unity, cultural pride and national identity cannot be led by someone whose previous public statements include words that have been the soundtrack of racial oppression for a long time. It is not merely a matter here of whether McKenzie “is” a racist in some essential sense, but of whether his leadership can reasonably be separated from the harm his words inflict.
The trick in these arguments is to retreat into identity politics, to argue, as McKenzie does, that one’s racial or cultural identity inoculates against racism. But history and scholarship tell us otherwise: prejudice makes no distinctions by identity lines. The colonised can insult the colonised. The oppressed can turn the tools of oppression against themselves.
Lastly, South Africa must beware two dangers. The first is the weaponisation of accusations of racism merely as a political strategy, which trivialises actual injury done through racism. The second is accepting abusive language from leaders as a venial offence if it aligns with our political inclinations.
Both erode the promise of the constitution to dignity, equality and justice. Racism is not to be unearthed only when it's politically convenient. It is a festering wound that requires healing from each one of us, including the folks who claim to have fought the same battle. And until and unless the wound is healed, our leaders cannot afford to play politics with the phrases that keep the wound from healing.
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