The rules of writing, such as they are, insist that mixing metaphors is clumsy; bad practice. When writing about social affairs – especially in political economy and history – it is also good to avoid alarmism, hyperbole and hysteria.

There are, also, things one may say without presenting evidence, such as observable facts or things that are known and accepted as fact. Other things may require evidence. In almost all instances, the writer is expected to be ‘objective’ and not, as a friend once observed, ‘empathise’ with the subject. This is just ridiculous. On social issues, humans write stories about other humans; there is no supernatural or invisible hand that writes stories. As for the rest, well, good writing can get around almost anything. Let me try, then, to write about what I consider to be the re-racialisation, and tribalisation of South African political economy, and its implications, and avoid, as much as it is possible, to violate these rules, and still make sense.

The divisive politics of ethnicity, race and regionalism that is rising in South Africa may be setting in motion the typical centrifugal forces that tend to pull societies apart. I write this on the eve of the 21^st anniversary of South Africa’s Freedom Day, when, in 1994, all citizens, cast their vote in the country’s first democratic election. The vote was an anticipatory endorsement of the Constitution that was being put together, and that would, in the months that followed, be adopted by Parliament. It is safe to assume that, at the time, everyone agreed to, and endorsed the new order. However, two decades later, potentially destructive prejudices are rising, and threatening to pull the country apart.

Writing this, I am reminded of the football meme about having the best team, ‘on paper’, but that games are played on the pitch. It is during the actual football match when things can go horribly wrong. When it comes down to it, on match day, as it were, games are played on the pitch, where control, power, and the clash of expectations, entitlements, individual error, and when the ridiculous and foul, trade places with the sublime in an instant. In this sense, then, South Africa has a good Constitution, but it’s all marvellous on paper. The sublime promises of non-racialism, of peace, prosperity, tolerance and understanding, conciliation and republican values, are trading places, spasmodically, with the horrors of violence, exclusion and of prejudice.

Non-racialism has come to mean that everyone is treated the same – excluding those who are not black, or not African – and now, not South African. Conciliation has become like a wasteful mantra. Repeat it often enough, and hope someone believes you. Just below the surface, though, everyone is ready to snap; at white people, at black people, at ‘coloured’ people; at Indian people and, periodically, at foreigners. First we label people, demean them, then strip them of history. People without history have no place in the present, and it becomes easy to vanquish them. Their history is, at best, that which we define for them.

This, anyway, is how we treat each other, in South Africa. This is what stares us in the face, as the ashes of burnt foreigners are blown up from the ground and into thin air by the icy early winter gusts. The facts of the matter, in and of themselves, seem less relevant – they are by no means less horrific – than their significance. It is certainly true that one swallow, does not make a summer, or that one good quality does not make a great leader. However, successive attacks on innocents, more lately on foreigners, as part of another, a different group (real or imagined) are starting to resemble a pattern. This pattern suggests a turn to ethnicity, and a racialising of political sentiments that are, indeed, cause for concern. This is what the evidence tells us, anyway.

In a speech to ‘his people’ the Zulu king, Goodwill Zwelithini, tells his followers that foreigners should leave South Africa. Edward Zuma, the son of South Africa’s president, and someone who takes pride in his Zulu identity, echoes the sentiments of ‘his king’. Let me be clear: people may identify themselves any way they chose – as long as they don’t project their values onto others. Quite obscene violence follows the subtle exhortations of the Zulu King and the president’s son. In consultations over the past year or so, and visits to the province, I have found that there have been a significant anti-Indian sentiment, on the back of calls for the largest indigenous community, the Zulus, to take greater control of the KwaZulu-Natal. In the provincial bureaucracy, ‘coloured’ people are stripped of authority, and increasingly find themselves marginalised; if not formally and physically, they are ignored and their work is shoved aside.

Now turn to the Western Cape, where ‘coloured’ workers – professionals like nurses and librarians – are losing their jobs because ‘there are too many coloureds’ in the province. The official policy is that the province should reflect that ‘national’ population/racial demographics. Turn to the capital, where the central government has essentially purged, by various means of coercion and consent, all ‘non-Africans’ (mainly whites) from the bureaucracy, and effectively denuded the state of skills, experience and institutional memory developed over decades. It is in central government, too, where the state-party nexus will insist on getting the population/racial demographics right. Of secondary consideration are matters of efficacy, capability and efficiency of service delivery. How far are we from loading people into trains, and shipping them off to locales where they meet racial criteria of the state-party nexus?

And then there is the selective amnesia, where an entire generation of white people seem to have no clue about Apartheid. Others, the older generation, have little to no understanding of how the structural impact of Apartheid has effected people across the spectrum, including their ‘own’ communities, and how privilege, vertically segmented over four centuries, continues to determine chances of prosperity and well-being.

None of this should be read as unqualified criticism of transformation! It’s just that I start from the questions: Transformation of what? Transformation to what extent? And an unshakable belief that we have to take responsibility for injustices committed in our name, and for the unintended consequences of our actions. I fear that affirmative action has become some kind of revenge…

Anyway, what does the evidence tell us? The thing about facts, believe it or not, is that they do not ‘speak for themselves’. Not always, anyway. Humans arrange facts in particular ways to tell particular stories. Like the writers-have-to-be-objective rubbish, facts do not reveal themselves, intact, on paper to the public. Humans select them, and humans omit facts that do not suit them.

The state-party nexus can spin the facts anyway they like, but the xenophobic violence of the past few weeks was just that; it was xenophobic violence. The murderous attacks and looting were not simple everyday acts of crime, although it is a crime to attack and kill humans and to loot shops. They were, also, not simply ‘Afrophobic’. With this term, Afrophobia, we already creating a new division (just-in-case) and ignoring the fact that Asian businesses have been were sacked over the past several months. Also, what happens, tomorrow, when non-Africans are attacked, do we revise or re-justify the violence and conveniently call it something else because it is not against ‘Africans’? These issues of nomenclature are important because they establish boundaries for discussion. It goes back to the argument I made in a previous column, in which I argued that out that we too easily assume that we, Africans, are the eternal victims and that we have to be saved from ourselves. This, too, is rubbish. We are as willing and able to kill, maim, rape and plunder as anyone else. An understanding of our own history may read no different from that of any other continent; the crimes of Europeans are just too fresh in our minds.

I do not make predictions. I leave this to economists, prelates, and board-walk fortune-tellers – people who can see into the future. If, however, there is any lesson from everything surrounding the xenophobic violence in the country – from the acts of brutality, to the wilful obfuscation by the state-party nexus and the exclusion of non-Africans in the discourse on xenophobia – it is that we are drifting dangerously close to destroying the social contract that the Constitution represents. That document stands to become worth less than the paper it is written on. We cannot continue to hide behind self-absolution and notions of eternal innocence. If we are to understand the significance of facts, and get as close to the truth as possible, we may want to starts with taking responsibility for our present deeds, and for the future we want for ourselves and our children. We are fast running out of excuses for continued poverty, inequality, misery and violence in our midst. DM