THE VISITING GRANDDAUGHTER of the late Nelson Mandela paid tribute to Ahmed Kathranda, friend of he and a celebrated anti-apartheid activist. She said revealed that Uncle Kathy, “died a broken man because the freedom that so many sacrificed for is being squandered by the current leadership”.
Ndileka Mandela, the eldest granddaughter of Madiba is recorded in the Nation newspaper as saying that black South Africans now had the right to vote but the disparity between the minority whites, who own the majority of the economic wealth, and the majority blacks was still there.
According to the article, South Africa is around 70% black and 30% white.
In Barbados Whites are an even smaller minority. Yet conventional wisdom is that the situation is largely the same.
If racial economic disparities exist they must either be due to social factors or biological factors. If you feel it is due to biological reasons then you need not read on. If you feel there are sociological forces at work, then the discussion may be worth continuing.
Columnist Peter Wickham once referenced a 2007 poll on race relations in Barbados. The poll found that “68 per cent of Barbadians believed that “whites” owned a disproportionate share of wealth here.” Despite that, “only 35 per cent felt the issue was “worth discussing”.”
In Barbados, to openly discuss race in any manner not designed to induce history-amnesia will get you branded a racist. Maybe we feel we’ve discussed it to death. Or maybe we’ve accepted the status quo as a given.
In South Africa, the conversation around race has been seemingly more mature, maybe due to the “Truth and Reconciliation Commissions.” During these proceedings, South Africans were encouraged to discuss the experiences of the past.
Persons guilty of violence during the apartheid era could even confess their crimes in exchange for amnesty. Among those who received amnesty was a police officer who masterminded a night-time raid on political activists that killed 11 people, most of them women and children who were attending a wake.
Many admitted perpetrators of racist crimes walked free in South Africa’s attempt to push the past to the side. In a recent discussion with the BBC, white South African satirist Pieter-Dirk Uys, who was an opponent of apartheid and also became a member of the African National Congress, candidly reflected on the horrors of apartheid and confessed that it is sometimes hard to believe that “we (whites) got away with it”.
Maybe it is the Truth and Reconciliation Commissions that provided the psychological space for a white South African to be so refreshingly candid and open about his history. No such space is easily recognisable in Barbados. Reconciliation is highly touted. But historical truth is routinely discouraged by some individuals.
Similarities between South African society and Barbadian society have long been noted by observers. I recall one historian theorising that the apartheid system was modelled after the Barbadian society.
The results of the aforementioned race poll led Wickham to theorise that, “Anglo-Barbadians “go out of their way” to meet Anglo-Barbadians to the extent that 69 per cent of them reported having a “majority” of Anglo friends, even though less than ten per cent of Barbadians were Anglo at that time. That major finding therefore supported the assertion that “voluntary racism,” exists in Barbados.
Another observer, former Nation columnist B.C., Pires wrote: Rigid racial divisions led to the preservation of inherited privilege and concomitant stifling of meritocracy. Since Emancipation, we – the ruling sector,
of which I am a minor part – have laboured to keep the masses entrapped instead of struggling to set them free”.
Before you tell me: “Shush wid dat race talk, is de economy we dealing wid,” Pires goes on to argue: “We do not need rampant vendors of black coral but a nascent black entrepreneurial class.
We must all create and participate in wealth…. Some problems you ignore – or pass off as something else – at your peril. Race (and racial division) is not the only Caribbean issue, but it remains primary. Unresolved, it will defeat our attempts at civilisation.” Race is an economic issue.
If persistent racial inequities are sociologically and not biologically based then leaders who are not continuing to overtly and directly address these issues may be, as Ndileka Mandela puts it, inadvertently or selfishly squandering the sacrifices of forefathers.
Her lamentations about the state of blacks in South Africa suggest that while necessary, truth and reconciliation are incomplete without a third ingredient: reparations.
A lot of that repair work we can do ourselves. It must be a major part of the work of a black government of a majority black country. A people repaired are better prepared to handle challenges. Everyone, of all races, will benefit.
Some people will still say: Sshush! We ain want nuh mo o dah race talk again. Is de economy we dealing wid now. Wuh dis got to do wid the threat of devaluation?” Maybe it is our narrow educational system that has us so unable to see the broad matrix?
Adrian Green is a creative communications specialist. Email Adriangreen14@gmail.com