Do South Africans Exist?. Ivor Chipkin
among themselves, and then dangling fat chequebooks in front of editors, writes Makoe (2001), they should state their views in public debate. Unfounded perceptions about Mbeki, he implies, are prevalent in the media because they have not been shown up as the ‘horrible’ views that they are by literate and articulate black writers. If Makoe, nonetheless, sympathises with Mabogoane et al.’s frustration that Mbeki is the subject of offensive articles, John Matshikiza is more dismissive. In the Mail and Guardian he calls it ‘nonsense’: ‘So, where are these whites?’ he asked. ‘And where are the forums that are endemically racist and reactionary?’ (Matshikiza, 2001). What both authors criticise are the so-called facts of the advertisement: that there is a white right-wing media campaign. What neither raise, however, is the logic of the argument itself. It is composed of the following premises:
•Blacks want to dismantle the legacy of apartheid.
•President Mbeki is black.
•He is head of a democratic black government.
•Since 1994 a million houses have been built, 1.3 million housing subsidies approved, 400,000 homes electrified and 120 clinics completed.
•Mbeki as the successful leader of a black government redressing the legacy of apartheid is helping black people regain their dignity.
•To criticise President Mbeki is to want to preserve the legacy of apartheid, undermine black rule, threaten democracy and insult the dignity of blacks.
The syllogisms above rest on three argumentative devices. The first is what we might call logical, the second empirical and the third is a rhetorical device. The least interesting part of this argument is its circularity: turning back the legacy of apartheid is included in the very definition of being black. This makes it logically indifferent to any empirical proof. Blacks are, by definition, reversing the apartheid inheritance. Yet the advertisement is not content with such an argumentative fiat; rather, it invites us to measure the truthfulness of its claims by a ‘factual’ measure: the number of houses built, and so on. It begs the question: What if the president cannot be shown empirically to be reversing the legacy of apartheid? For the most part, this is the level at which the debate happens.
This line of reasoning, whatever its merits and demerits, obscures another more worrying argumentative device. The advertisement employs a rhetorical claim that appeals to a different standard of evidence than that of the record in fact of President Mbeki and his government. On the advertisement’s terms, the argument can still be true even if the ‘facts’ are wrong. Or even: the ‘bad’ facts are enrolled as further support of why the president is so good. What is at stake are the criteria of good and bad, true and false. Discussing when people have the ‘right to criticise’, the advertisement makes the following claims:
The White rightwing forces do not realise that the right to criticise is accompanied by a responsibility to be fair and to recognise the landmarks and the achievements of the government and Black people in the way Black journalists and commentators do. In the absence of such balance, no amount of self-righteous claims of the public interest, transparency and press freedom will conceal their real motives (Mabogoane et al., 2001).
Valid criticism is here premised on love for the country and its people, and predicated on loyalty to the government. This is what authentic blacks do: they caution when the president ‘errs’, they lift him when he ‘stumbles’, they know that he is human and sometimes behaves as such, and they know too that his government is the best South Africa has ever had. This is the standard of authentic criticism, and to act differently is evidence of, at least, a lack of patriotism and, at worst, racism and treason. This is why black writers and journalists balance their criticism with praise. But there is an anomaly here: certain blacks, it would seem, do not. In discussing the identities of the plotters, the advertisement makes the following startling claim: ‘Separately from them (the White right-wingers), there are a few Black commentators who unwittingly contribute to this campaign’ (Mabogoane et al., 2001). What these unspecified blacks lack is authenticity, presumably because they find fault without praise. It is precisely this rhetorical device that Xolela Mangcu rebuts:
[T]he advertisement raises an important point about the moral autonomy of black people. The ad relies on a logic of black authenticity that urges them to put solidarity with their leaders or heroes above everything else. In this case the history of racial oppression is used as racial blackmail, or what Mothubi Mutloatse describes as ‘the liberation handcuffs that have given us Mugabe, Nujoma and now Chiluba’ (Mangcu, 2001).
Mangcu is troubled that the appeal to black solidarity is elevated above what he calls ‘moral reasoning’: the autonomy to make ethical judgements about what is right or wrong. In other words, he refuses to condone the line that the president should be supported simply because he is black.
Mangcu is defending a notion of blackness that balances solidarity with what he calls ‘moral reasoning’, in contrast to the terms of the advertisement: blackness/loyalty to the president and government. His remarks go to the core of what is novel in the way blackness is sometimes (and more and more) discussed. Authentic blacks support the president and the government, not on the basis of their record in advancing a certain project, but simply because they are black. Herein lies the fundamental rupture with Black Consciousness2 and the politics of national democratic revolution (NDR)3, two key views of what it means to be a South African that will be discussed in detail in later chapters.
Blackness no longer denotes a social position (in the racial capitalist relations of production) or a psychological condition. It designates an authentic national subject that is loyal to the state simply because that state is controlled by other blacks like it. The facts are irrelevant to the proof. Or rather, the argument appeals to other ‘facts’. But what are these facts? Or rather, what is the new mark of authenticity? Who is ‘Black’ and not merely black? If the measure of ‘Blackness’ is not given by the degree to which the legacy of apartheid is reversed, then nor is it simply a question of complexion. We recall that there are ‘Blacks’ (more correctly, blacks) in the service of the plotters. So, to what does ‘Blackness’ refer?
Let us approach this displacement in the following way. In terms of Black Consciousness and NDR, a black was ‘Black’ to the extent that he/she undertook certain concrete, particular actions: resisted racial oppression, struggled against exploitation, and asserted the value of black culture and history. In the same way, and following this logic, a government was ‘Black’, i.e. libératoire, to the extent that it took certain actions to reverse the legacy of apartheid: ended racial discrimination, redressed the material inequality between blacks and whites, and so on. Authenticity had a measure that was evidenced by particular facts. What matters here is a certain epistemology: that belief follows from evidence: ‘I support the government because, through a process of reasoning and verification, I have come to the conclusion that it is truly reversing the legacy of apartheid.’ We recall, however, that this is not the standard of truth suggested by the advertisement. Valid criticism, criticism in other words that is true, is by definition balanced by praise. And how do we know this? Precisely because, according to the advertisement, blacks that reproach the African National Congress (ANC) government without complimenting it lose their claim to authenticity. Certainly, President Mbeki makes mistakes, but in essence, the advertisement holds, he is turning back the apartheid tide. Or, rather: President Mbeki is an excellent ‘Black’ leader, over and above the details of his actual political record.
What is the condition of truth in such a claim? What is at stake is a certain ontology: belief (that the government is authentically ‘Black’) does not derive from evidence (data collected, sorted and interrogated by reason). Rather, the facts are revealed through belief – a mysterious inversion. Only through loyalty to the government (patriotism) is it apparent how President Mbeki and his government are addressing the vestiges of apartheid. Knowledge follows from belief, or access to the truth is only attained through faith. This last term is precise here. For the analogy is Christian religious conviction: ‘to believe in Christ because we consider him wise and good is a dreadful blasphemy – it is, on the contrary, only the act of belief itself which can give us insight into his goodness and wisdom’ (Kierkegaard, cited in Zizek, 1992: 37).