The image of democracy remains blurry through the eyes of many black South Africans, many that have been squeezed through the white spaces between the colours of this rainbow nation.
South Africa (SA), 1994. The prison bars break open, Land, Pass and Immorality Acts are burned with other Statutes, and the National Party has fallen. South Africa, 1994.Democracy is written and signed in wet black ink on record; the newspapers are there to see it, bodies in suits and strong hands shake in agreement, they put on a show for the world to see. The Purple have begun to govern. Under a blanket idea of a rainbow that covers a nation that exists in between the lines; Nelson Mandela, and a South Africa coloured in peace, truth and reconciliation.
The conception of a “rainbow-like” SA is bore from a political history that is rooted within the societal constructs and conditions of black communities. Imperative components to take note of when looking at political histories are the political institutions that were in place at the time, those such as the political parties and their influence in the class divide.
The African National Congress (ANC), having been formed in 1912, with Comrades like Mr. Walter Sisulu, Anton Lembede and Oliver Tambo was a thriving black party, that Nelson Mandela later joined in 1944. History Researcher Raymond Stutter in his “African National Congress (ANC): Attainment of Power, Post Liberation Phases and Current Crisis” report, described the ANC to be a “circulation of elitists” during its prime time, where policies were developed by people who were standing from a ground that was further in education, a ground that was standing in work shoes and most likely living in a house, with food on the table; these kinds of said “privileges” that some black people had, and that others did not, further placed the socio-economic circumstances of the people at different “levels” for generations to follow.
*Thandokazi Yako (40) thought it significant to note that even before SA became a democratic country, the socio-economic circumstances in black communities were not the same, “there were black professionals, nurses and lawyers, and black poverty stricken people existin simultaneously. People moved through the cities and were exposed to centres of income”. There are a number of contributing factors to these spaces of inequality in black communities and the spaces that were, then – however, the common thread here is that these historical atrocities in SA were at the cost of all black lives. The ANC, the first elected black government disappointed the future of many South African blacks when they spoke for democracy under a rainbow nation.
An employee at Rhodes University, *Babalwa Sithole (44), member of the cooking and kitchen staff discussed her democracy experience since 1994 when she was 22 years old. Working as a helper for a white family in the city at the, she understood that all the obvious forms of oppression would be over, “, police brutality, passes and things like that were going to be over”. However, her home in Khayamandi, Stellenbosch still shook in heavy winds and rain often dropped in. She was still the only one with a job in a family of 6 and sometimes her only meal of the day came from her workplace; at 22. She explains that she understood democracy as a change of everything around her and a change for other black people, “more and more black people were in the cities, living and working, driving cars as time went by” but she did not see the changes in her life.
Today *Babalwa is still living in Joza, a township in Grahamstown, with a family of 5, still speaks of democracy like she did years ago.
The ideology of a rainbow nation painted over the living circumstances of many black South Africans, digging deeper the hole that continues to swallow them today. Democracy under this ideology carried the “ANC blacks”, put “them” in “Model-C” schools and allowed “them” to live in the suburbs. It spread wider the division of black communities and families and created spaces where black people hold attitudes of superiority over others because of their English accents.
The colours of the rainbow nation perpetuate this divide, and continue to dissolve black lives.
Tags: #BlurryDemocracy #WhiteSpace #1994 #ANC
*Names changed for the purpose of the article.