Eric Miyeni’s vitriolic Sowetan column brought to mind what must have been George W Bush’s most, and possibly only, powerful aphorism: “You are either with us, or against us.”
The remark was designed to fend off growing criticism from the media surrounding his government’s so-called war on terror. It was a cunning stance engineered to polarise opinion and silence critics, who would be made to feel like they embraced the values the terrorists espoused if they disagreed with US policies.
Miyeni’s column evinced a similar strategy or at least is a manifestation of that mindset.
By conflating blackness with the ruling party, anyone who expresses disapproval of the government or exposes any of its corrupt members is presumed to not only be against it but is also counted as a racist or a traitor. If they happen to be non-white then the only explanation for their critical appraisal is their link to the enemy, “white masters”, who are presumed to disapprove of any actions the government take on the basis of their race.
Within this context any form of critical assessment and or exposure of malfeasance within the government ranks is immediately nullified on the grounds of racism and the focus is quite cunningly turned on the critic and his or her allegiances and motives.
In other words the critic’s legitimacy and betrayal – as was the case with Miyeni’s column – becomes the central concern rather than the issue that prompted the ruckus in the first place.
Bush’s rhetoric generated a pervasive yet intangible form of self-censorship in which people became afraid to publicly voice their criticisms of US policy lest they be labelled non-patriots.
Fortunately, Miyeni doesn’t hold a position in high office, so his influence is limited to those who read his column.
Nevertheless Miyeni’s bigoted views haven’t been confined to this last column and he has been finding an audience for some time, so one can presume that many South Africans embrace his stance, regardless of how clumsily he articulates it. While his last controversial column evinced his inability to build a strong argument, we can’t simply dismiss his point of view, for his attacks on Ferial Haffejee, editor of City Press, are supported by many, particularly those in the ruling party.
It is a mindset in which loyalty is linked to a peculiar kind of racial camaraderie, where criticism is ultimately viewed as a betrayal not only of the government but a fixed meaning of “blackness”. The more entrenched this thinking becomes the more racially polarised our society will become.
Miyeni’s controversial statements have been dissected to death but what most observers overlooked was the reference, or should one say dig, at Jacob Dlamini, an academic, journalist and author of Native Nostalgia.
Miyeni and other government supporters and employees, “writing in their personal capacity”, took exception to Dlamini’s book.
Miyeni confessed he had never read it but had no qualms about passing judgment because the very notion that life under apartheid might be reflected on through the lens of nostalgia was too abhorrent to even contemplate and was proof in itself that Dlamini was a traitor who was looking for ways to facilitate the absolution of white guilt.
Dlamini’s novel drew quite a different response from academia.
At the recent Apartheid Archives conference entitled Narratives, Nostalgia, Nationhoods that ran at Wits University last week, it was clear that Dlamini’s novel, or memoir, in which he recounts his youth under apartheid, had demonstrated that nostalgia could be a subversive tool. And, as Gadeba Baderoon suggested, it prompted and promoted a mode of recovery in which a “whole history” could be retrieved that might show that “life was not completely depleted by apartheid”.
Because of this she felt “entitled to remember more than I had allowed myself to”. Put plainly, she had censored the way in which she remembered her past because it didn’t conform to the entrenched script that defines our history.
For Miyeni, Dlamini’s account “reinforced the thinking among young blacks that apartheid was not so bad after all, so why don’t we ‘move on already’”. Baderoon observed that this kind of criticism suggests that any narrative that does not fit into the dominant nationalist one, where the roles of victim and perpetrator are clearly predetermined by race, is immediately rejected. This, of course, limits our understanding of our vexed history but, most importantly, it has consequences for how we presently conceive of betrayal because it is from this narrow purview that those who veer off the well-trodden path or critically assess particular behaviours are deemed traitors who have betrayed “their race”.
In other words there is no grey area or, as Bush put it, “You are either with us or against us.” Though, of course, from Miyeni’s point of view such allegiances are already predetermined by your racial profile. In this way one can only choose betrayal, claiming membership to a group isn’t an option.
Interestingly, the notion of what constitutes betrayal within this limited paradigm underpins Dlamini’s recent project, a study of Glory Sedibe, known as “September”, a leading MK intelligence officer who was abducted from Swaziland by Eugene De Kok in June 1986 before being turned into an informant.
September’s betrayal appears straightforward: information he revealed to his captors led to the deaths and capture of many of his comrades. As Dlamini read out extracts from a court transcript it became clear that September did not think of himself as a traitor.
He refused to admit that his actions led to the deaths of members of Umkhonto weSizwe for he simply relayed the truth and that it was incongruent to think of the truth as betrayal.
September revealed information to De Kok and his cronies but it didn’t mean he supported the apartheid state or had reneged on his loyalty to the ANC or the struggle. So even in such a situation where betrayal seems so cut-and-dried, Dlamini is demonstrating that it is more complex. He is looking to overturn this overly simplistic nationalist narrative or at least allow us to become aware of the contradictions and nuances that have been suppressed.
No doubt when the results of Dlamini’s study of Sedibe “September” enters the public realm, Miyeni and others who share his thinking, will once again eschew his work and, ironically, label him a white sympathiser, a traitor, for the past has already been written, the heroes have been cast in stone and the victims and perpetrators identified.
There is no room within the dominant nationalist narrative for grey areas, where the attributes thought to define whiteness and blackness are not so easily identifiable. And it is upon this foundation that the conditions and the mindset of the present day have been built and which reverberated through Miyeni’s offending column. - Mary Corrigall