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| Weer die native Club [boodskap #110414] |
Ma, 29 Mei 2006 09:19  |
Ferdi Greyling
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Nog 'n rubriek oor die Native Club. Die keer deur 'n swart akademikus,
een met diep wortels in die UDF en die ANC.
Dit was in die Sunday Times
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Native Club a dangerous move to deflect attention from
state failings
ÂIF IT was not the month of MayÂ, quipped a friend on
hearing of the Native Club, ÂI would have thought it was an April
Fools' joke. The heated debate that has flowed in the wake of the
launch of this morally offensive project is the one encouraging sign
that the idea of a Native Club will not be tolerated within our
broader political culture; in fact, I predict that it will fade into
oblivion. What should trouble South Africans, though, is that this
idea could have been mooted in the first place.
Some time ago I made the point that under the Mbeki
presidency, race is back. And it is back in a crude way
that would simply have been inconceivable under Nelson Mandela's
leadership. The letter of invitation to the Ânatives betrays both
clumsy grammar and political
origins: ÂThe Native Club is the Presidential project ... Â Such
hypersensitivity to race glares from so many presidential statements
on matters of the economy, Aids, trade and everyday life that ordinary
South Africans have become nervous about what such signals portend. We
are not out of the woods with respect to the building of a strong and
unified, non-racial democracy.
In my political science classes I learnt two simple lessons about the
state and democracy in the Third World. First, that as the state fails
to deliver to the masses economically, it becomes more and more
authoritarian. Second, that as frustration mounts about this failure
to deliver, they begin to turn on their fellow citizens, invoking
divisive identities such as race, ethnicity, religion or nationality.
It is not surprising, therefore, that the more anxious responses to
the Native Club have come from white South Africans, some with
impeccable activism histories. But for the critique to be effective,
it has to come from black intellectuals themselves, and this is where
thinkers such as Vukani Mde, John Matshikiza and Sipho Seepe have made
invaluable contributions in demonstrating the dangerous exclusionism
that underpins this anachronistic idea of a native club.
I always find it strange when those in power  that is, the black
political and economic elite  cry the loudest about their
disempowerment. The parallels between the Afrikaner Broederbond and
the Native Club are too powerful to ignore, the one fuelled by white
nationalism, the other by black nationalism. Both gained political
prominence when their race held political power and have fuelled
support through explosive rhetoric about racial marginalisation. Like
the Broederbond, the Native Club has direct encouragement from, and
connections to, state power. Herein lies its danger.
It is easy, within such contexts, to whip up emotionally charged
sentiments about the racialised ÂOtherÂ, to punt extreme examples
about racial prejudice in boardroom appointments and university
promotions, and to point to racial favour in the distribution of
economic opportunity.
No doubt, some of these concerns are valid and need to be redressed.
But let's take a closer look at one of the publicised complaints. It
has been charged that black people are denied promotion to senior
positions in academia while whites with lesser credentials readily
find access to professorships. I have worked as an academic and leader
in both black and white universities in South Africa and sat on
countless promotion boards. I cannot think of a single example, at
least since 1994, where this claim is true.
It is alleged by one of the natives that a white man with
an honours degree received a professorship but a black
academic with a PhD could not achieve this status. On the
face of it, outrageous; until you find out the white person
so scandalised is one of South Africa's most prominent
media intellectuals who, on the basis of his achievements, would walk
comfortably into a professorship at the Center on the Press, Politics
and Public Policy at Harvard.
What this example does, of course, is to conceal the fact
that a host of black academics have been awarded
professorships in the employment-equity freefall. This
damages the strength and sustainability of the academy and repeats the
kind of mediocrity visited on Afrikaans universities under the
affirmative action efforts of white nationalists.
There is this relentless demand, and unspoken assumption,
that by virtue of being black, corrective action applies in university
promotions in the same way it applies to working your way up the
employment ladder in a canning factory. When the five or six serious
universities in South Africa put a clamp on this behaviour, it
provokes the kind of anger spread at places like the Native Club.
Where, in this racially charged environment, does the responsibility
of the black academic lie? Since the '90s, there has been a huge
volume of funding, national and international, that limited resources
strictly to what is still called Âcapacity building for black
researchers. Universities, in a lack of imagination, borrowed language
like Âgrowing your own timber to signal their own investment in the
accelerated growth of black scholars.
Since the '80s, tens of millions of dollars trained
hundreds of black postgraduate students in US universities, most of
whom returned home. Yet, to this day, white males are singled out as
the problem, a maligned group that continues to produce more than 80%
of the research output of this country.
This is the kind of cannon fodder on which the Native Club builds its
legitimacy, deflects responsibility and fuels the fires of racial
animosity in a still-fragile democracy.
Jansen is Dean of Education and Professor of Curriculum
Studies at the University of Pretoria
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| Re: Weer die native Club [boodskap #110514 is 'n antwoord op boodskap #110414] |
Vr, 09 Junie 2006 10:20  |
Vuur
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U turn ?
'Native Club for Afrikaner too'
08/06/2006 22:39 - (SA)
Native Club: Mbeki must explain
http://www.news24.com/News24/South_Africa/Politics/0,,2-7-12 _1948156,00.html
Cape Town - Afrikaners should join the Native Club recently set up by
representatives of South Africa's black intelligentsia, said President
Thabo Mbeki on Thursday.
He would have no problem approaching the club to seek to take part in
its activities, the president told MPs during Wednesday's presidency
budget vote debate.
"I hope I would find in its ranks the Afrikaners ... who hoped that one
day they would have the possibility to proclaim that they were proudly
South African and African natives."
Mbeki denied assertions that the initiative was "the property of the
President of the Republic".
The Native Club has come under fire for its alleged racially exclusive
nature
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