The
ideal of a South Africa that belongs to all who live in it has constantly been
challenged by racial separatists and tribalists. It will take knowledge about
social transformation, a willingness to set aside one’s self-interest for the
greater good, and an understanding of the context in which non-racialism is
implemented to begin making purposeful social change work. 

Contrary
to popular belief, the humanism in all those who have classified themselves as
being different from their fellow human beings is liquidating the logic of
racism and other chauvinisms as the core basis. The black and white race in RSA
is already witnessing a cultural “convergence,” no history will stop it; what
is outstanding is genuine racial integration in single medium schools without
introducing dual medium. The next generation of South Africans, through
voluntary and compulsory custodial institutions such as schools, would have to
learn to live together, levelling out the artificial distinctions and taking
steps toward nationwide social cohesion. 


South
Africa is a non-racial democracy. It is illegal not to be non-racial. It
follows, therefore, that all juristic persons, groups, or institutions are in
law assumed to be non-racial to the extent that they are South African.
However, non-racialism is not a mechanically arrived-at human value; it should
be lived and experienced. 

Non-racialism
cannot exist apart from how the different racial groups embrace each other as
components of the human race. Oftentimes, the context of non-racialism is
choked and limited by seeing our world in light of our own and diverse backgrounds.
As we institutionalise the us-and-them in race terms, the experience of racial
tensions is inevitable. Non-racialism or racism is not something that happens
to us; instead, we’re also active creators of it.

It
is the institutions we create as humanity that ultimately become nests of
whatever behaviour or value system we espouse or promote. Identity-defined
institutions, often justified by the notion of diversity, have become the most
vulnerable to a us-and-them human experience. It has become easy to exclude in
defence of diversity that the shift to other chauvinism is seamless and
generally unnoticed as a consequence of how we choose to organise
ourselves. 

The
reality is that if leaders don’t become socially intelligent, they end up being
managed by the habits of those they have institutionalised themselves with,
rather than leading by their actual human and guiding values and objectives.
The lenses we wear when we are in identity-defined contexts and own affairs
environments tend to stay with us throughout all other contexts. The culture
which these lenses build permeates everything about us.

Virtually
all decisions that humanity makes have a diversity component because some
distinct groups benefit while others do not. Racism or non-racialism, like
culture, is not random. It is an organised system of values, attitudes, beliefs
and meanings that are related to each other and the environmental
context. 

How
organisations are formed, the historical context that instructed their
formation, determines who or what they eventually become. The Afriforum and
Solidariteit have been established in or as a result of the context. It has
always been a myth that a post-1994  South Africa will outlive its
almost pathological apartheid era racism and related. South Africa has yet to
usher in an unencumbered human coexistence contest where one’s skin colour is
no longer correlated with one’s prospects for success. The post-BELA Act and
Expropriation Acts RSA political posture reminded us that the historical and
structural roots of racial inequality, as well as its subtle defence, run deep.
Although they’re less visible, they’re lurking beneath the surface, spreading
their decay.

One of the reasons there
has been so much conflict in the past three post-apartheid decades in South
Africa is the disparity in economic results based on historical advantage and
the stubborn templates of economic and social dominance. We have seen tribes
organised as civil society movements picking up campaigns that have varying
interpretations, including a possible ‘make apartheid great again’ and ‘kill
the Boer’. In light of Afriforum and Solidariteit’s measured response to Trump’s
executive orders regarding the RSA, and the further schism it has created, we
must wonder whether racial tensions will, at some point, make peaceful
coexistence possible. 

With
the weakening relations between Donald Trump, the central political figure
around whom the ‘Make America Great Again’ movement is centred, and Elon Musk,
a key lobby group in the US, an opportunity for a new and sober look at the RSA
has arisen. The reality is that the moment of true economic transformation has
arrived. The weakened ANC needs to be genuine about the promises it made during
the liberation struggle, if it is to survive the upcoming elections. The social
and economic arrangements that sustained apartheid era domination of one race
by the other are facing natural expiration, save for human constructed
templates or … holding it. 

It
is of utmost importance for all South Africans to recalibrate their feelings
about other races. Failure to do so not only propels racism, with all its known
evil intents, into a context of all contexts, but it also underlines the
urgency of the situation. It is therefore essential for all to master their
tribal impulses and adhere to the founding values of the RSA Constitutional
order. 

For
South Africa to realise the ideal state that its Constitution is all about, it
should manage the growth of identity politics and voting, as well as institutionalise
separatism. We have seen participation in politics more as an expression of
identity than a civic duty. For all its sins, the ANC has lately been opposed
more for its social and economic justice-based integration of the South African
society. The gradual loss of race-anchored status, which is a hidden injury to
a fictitious class, was never on display, such as the peddling of criminal farm
killings as genocide in the Oval Office. A national dialogue to establish
consensus about what the actual injustices of the past are will go a long way
in making non-racialism a serious concept to integrate into the institutional
being of Afriforum and Solidariteit. 

RSA
must recognise that concepts like intersectionality, restitution,
transformation, Black Economic Empowerment, land expropriation, and many others
weren’t created for political sake; they were designed to address real, lived
experiences of discrimination and injustice. Until the outcomes of apartheid
social engineering and templates of economic exclusion are recalibrated, social
tensions disguised as civil rights protests will befall our democracy. CUT!!