There’s probably nothing more that might usefully be added to Lindiwe Sisulu’s “Let’s storm the constitution” controversy. The responses have been as numerous as those Sisulu attempts to blame for the sickening poverty and deprivation so many in SA continue to face: the constitution (naturally); the judiciary (generally); “mentally colonised African” judges (specifically), and those “black politicians” who are “assets for colonised capital”.
But one class of ostensible perpetrator has, I think, received insufficient attention: legal journalist Karyn Maughan’s grandfathers. As Maughan documented, her questions to Sisulu following the publication of the initial piece on IOL elicited a response from Sisulu in which she not once but twice insisted that Maughan’s grandfathers were perpetrators of apartheid and consequently she, Maughan, was not entitled to ask Sisulu about her own culpability for the social and economic ills she laments.
I don’t know Maughan’s grandfathers, and I very much suspect Sisulu doesn’t either. I also suspect had I or any other white person asked those questions of her we would have drawn a similar response.
My own grandfather was a victim of some of the most monstrous acts of World War 2: his father, blinded through torture, was shot in the back of the head, buried in a mass, unmarked grave in the forests of Katyn. His mother, sister and brother were deported to concentration camps in Siberia.
It is only one thread in a larger family history. And that my grandfather was undoubtedly a victim of some of Europe’s worst crimes doesn’t mean he, and we the family that came after him, weren’t also undeserving beneficiaries of a grotesque system of racial injustice.
But this detail does go some way to complicating the facile diorama in which Sisulu would have us live: where whites are only perpetrators, and where those sins disqualify them from full civic participation.
But here’s another thing: whatever repudiation of the Freedom Charter’s soaring promise such racial animosity might entail, you might at least expect that it be maintained with some integrity. But it is not. Sisulu, and especially that faction whose helm she looks to take, seemingly have no qualms about historical wrongs when it comes to crooked business dealings.
So, Bell Pottinger’s Victoria Geoghegan, whose father is a well-known and long-term player in the notoriously corrupt global arms trade, could sit in her Mayfair, London, office exchanging emails with the likes of Duduzane Zuma and with the MK Military Veterans Association’s Kebby Maphatsoe, about talking points to push the “white monopoly capital” narrative.
Or how about former Bain SA boss Vittorio Massone, who unbelievably managed to secure the time and attention of our then president on 17 separate occasions between 2012 and 2014, engaging in boasts that would have done any bru proud: “Guys, met president yesterday night in CT. All good. There was also a Tom (a guy we met via [the SA Revenue Service]) and it really seems he is getting that job after election.”
It’s hard not to choke on the cynical absurdity of it all. But it isn’t just that this racial polarisation that Sisulu insists on is a caricature of the rich tapestry a democratic SA was intended to be, or that it is entirely at odds with at least the business dealings of those she seems to represent. Most damagingly, it sets back her claimed and worthy objective: of addressing the grinding poverty and unsustainable inequality in which SA is mired.
If there is to be the kind of wealth creation and wealth transfer in SA that is needed to secure genuine, broad-based upliftment, those with whom that discussion must be had will need to believe there is a political home for them here too.
• Fritz, a public interest lawyer, is director of the Helen Suzman Foundation.
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