There are three things that seem true. The first is that Clicks employs, or has recently fired, an advertising agency staffed by people who are profoundly unequipped, both intellectually and emotionally, to present any idea whatsoever to the public.
Thuli Madonsela, commenting on the now infamous Clicks advert that describes a white model’s hair as “normal” and contrasts it with a black model’s “dry and damaged” hair, suggested that it was a classic case of “unconscious bias”.
I think the former public protector was being a bit too generous. Unconscious bias implies the existence of a mind being nudged this way and that, and whichever people created and approved that appalling idea surely cannot qualify as conscious. The best one can say of them is that they are ignorant, arrogant illiterates, perhaps insulated by privilege and a mediocre education against the social, political and historical realities of the past few centuries.
The second thing that seems true is that the EFF has just one path to political power: the economic collapse of SA, triggering an inevitable and irresistible surge in populism and authoritarianism. It’s why the EFF has been the loudest advocate of extending or returning to an ultra-strict national lockdown: every business that goes under is another step down the red carpet towards that cream-coloured, patent-leather throne.
This week the party has been explicit and unapologetic about its desire to shut down Clicks, but the long-term strategy is less picky. Julius Malema said as much on Monday. Checkers and Shoprite needn’t have shuttered their doors, too, he said, since his fight wasn’t with them — at least not this week. “Their day will come,” he added, specifically, and I must say I believe him: if Malema is to rise, commerce must fall.
It’s transparent. It’s cynical. But the third thing that seems true is this: despite being transparent and cynical, the EFF is owning this moment. And it’s doing it because there’s nobody else who can.
The party’s line is that of a sort of antiracism vigilante, and it’s a line that works, especially in a party that has punted the idea that Nelson Mandela was a sell-out or possibly even an agent of white supremacy. The ANC, it insists, tried rainbowism and a negotiated settlement, and look! The racists continue to thrive. Many have stopped hiding and now openly flaunt their beliefs. Stronger medicine is needed. Talking hasn’t worked. Now things need to be pushed over and people need to lose money.
In a way, they’re right. It is depressing and exhausting that in 2020 young, upwardly mobile people who have a tertiary education and are in contact with the modern world are still parroting the worldview of their great-grandparents, in which whiteness is the default and everything else is an aberration. Stronger medicine is needed.
The problem is that it’s not being prescribed by anything resembling a doctor, or at least not a medical one: on Monday, after it was reported that a Clicks branch in Emalahleni had been petrol-bombed, the EFF’s resident academic, Mbuyiseni Ndlozi PhD, suggested the branch had “petrol-bombed itself in an attempt to influence the court”.
This, to me, is the crisis exposed by Clicks and the EFF this week; the reason Malema can own this moment so completely and thrust his party of wreckers into the spotlight, apparently in defence of a just cause.
It is, simply, that there’s nobody else. There is no large, respected, legitimate organisation, placed well away from politics and the courts, that can take charge of this situation and deal out not only justice but also sense and enlightenment.
What Clicks and its ad agency need now isn’t petrol bombs. What they need is a panel of highly respected South Africans, imbued with a mandate and moral authority, to force quiet but inexorable change and learning through legal, moral means. They need to face consequences, but more importantly they need to be taught why they’re facing them, so that change isn’t just window dressing but a genuine awakening of consciousness.
Unfortunately, these sorts of organisations — social-political ombudsmen, if you will — no longer exist, if they ever did. All that’s left are the courts, the politicians and, their voices small and far outside the tent, people such as Madonsela.
And in the centre there is a hole; a void, without leadership, without effective education, without a real, pragmatic, supported programme dedicated to deprogramming the cultists.
The EFF thunders and postures, and Clicks apologises (badly). But in the great silent, broken middle, the children grow up and go to work, serenely sure that their beliefs about the world, about right and wrong, about who is normal and who isn’t, are true.
• Eaton is an Arena Holdings columnist.
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