Honest reflection shows that Rainbow Nation still eludes us
South Africa’s celebrated reconciliation is a myth because it is premised only on truth and not justice
In 1994 the ANC won historic elections that installed the first black-led government in South Africa.
It has been 24 years since we first saw the iconic image of Nelson Mandela and FW de Klerk with hands joined and raised high above their heads in elation after the official inauguration of the government of national unity.
That image symbolised a turning point, a healing of a divide that had ripped the country apart for centuries.
It is an important milestone in South Africa’s history that all should look back on with pride. It should not, however, be seen as the point at which the country truly achieved reconciliation and created the new South Africa.
That moment represents a beginning. It was the day the ground was broken, that the soil was turned.
It was a signal to the beginning of a long and difficult process of reimagining a nation and fashioning it.
People could be forgiven if they, in 1994 and the years following, harboured the illusion that the proclamation of the Rainbow Nation and conclusion of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) meant the breach had been healed.
The relatively peaceful transition that avoided a fullon civil war – although not without violent battles and a huge loss of life in the 1980s and early 1990s – and a process that saw a number of apartheid functionaries confess their crimes to affected families, the whole country and the world, created a wave of goodwill.
That goodwill has been exhausted. The state of the nation today testifies that the ideal has certainly eluded us.
The rainbowism of the Mandela years is as good as dead and buried. The pervasive flare-ups of racial tension should be enough to convince us of this.
From Penny Sparrow to the whites-only guest house owner in KZN; from the Spur incident and Dove and H&M marketing debacles to the coffin duo who beat and pushed a farm worker into a coffin.
The Vicki Momberg case stands out from the pack, she being the first person to be jailed for crimen injuria after hurling racial slurs at a black police officer who was merely carrying out his duty after she had been the victim of a smash and grab incident. She showed no remorse throughout her trial.
The truth is that rainbowism was built on a fragile foundation symbolised in the process and outcome of the TRC.
Reconciliation premised only on truth and not justice is destined to be weak.
Justice here is not to be construed narrowly as just punitive measures meted out on the perpetrators of apartheid, a crime against humanity.
It refers equally to the onus on those perpetrators and representatives of the white community that benefited from their policies and activities to corporately acknowledge that crime.
Rainbowism failed to be emphatic about the need to dismantle the very structure of the society that this crime spawned, rejecting it as a base upon which to construct a new South Africa.
We need to be honest and accept that the Convention for a Democratic South Africa was a peace settlement and that 1994 was an outcome of the cessation of hostilities.
The peace has held thus far. The challenge is that those who are threatened by change use this settlement to straitjacket those who agitate for it. This is a misuse of this fragile peace. Buying into the threat and fear mongering about rocking the boat has meant the path to change has been slower than it should have been. The constitution, which is also a product of this settlement, also exudes this aspiration for change.
An honest reflection will bring any observer to conclude that the new South Africa is neither qualitatively nor substantively different from the old South Africa.
The disparities that existed in the past are ubiquitous in the present, implying that democracy has only enabled the injustices of the past rather than thwarted them.
This is the biggest threat to the country’s fragile peace.