Brian Isaacs Brian Isaacs
WHEN political organisations were banned by the apartheid regime in the 1960s, the people of South Africa found a host of ways of fighting apartheid. The fight, of course, was also against greed and for the rights of the poor.
One of the most strategic ways in which people then resisted was on the sports front. The South Africa Council on Sport (Sacos) – under the leadership of Frank van der Horst, still a present-day activist, when former activists are now on retirement – was a powerful sports organisation which placed the masses in the centre of a concept which the organisation (and like-minded organisations) believed in – and that was non-racialism.
You could play sport in the organisation if you considered yourself first and foremost a human being. Together with other progressive (not holding back a human being’s full development) organisations, Sacos debunked the myth of race. It believed that race was a social construct, and pointed out that modern-day science debunked the notion of race.
In the school situation in the 1970s to 1990s, thousands of students of the poor were exposed to the concept of non-racialism.
These schools today should be very proud of their non-racialism credentials – they can teach the Model C schools how to transform.
In today’s SA, there are two groups of oppressed people. One believing that you need to exert your blackness so that you can counter the racism in SA and move on eventually to non-racialism.
Recent writings of Eusebius McKaizer allude to this. The other group of the oppressed believes strongly in the concept of non-racialism. Writings of Charles Thomas illustrate this.
This is a very interesting debate that the oppressed and the oppressor need to deal with.
Allan Zinn, in the book Non-racialism in SA – The Life and Times of Neville Alexander, gives one a view into the philosophy of the non-racialism expounded by Neville Alexander. What would Neville Alexander have said about the opposition to colonial values placed on students in Model C schools?
How would he have used the tools of non-racialism to challenge the colonial values or colonialism of a special type coined by Joe Slovo?
Firstly, I believe that Neville felt that many oppressed schools in SA had already for at least 60 years been exposed to the philosophy of non-racialism and, therefore, could practise non-racialism in their schools.
Like Neville, I believe in the concept of non-racialism as an answer to the National Question. What do we use to move forward as a nation? Archbishop Tutu spoke of the Rainbow Nation.
Neville speaks of the great Gariep (Orange River) with all tributaries flowing into it. Neville does not deny that in society, after years of racist philosophy, race is not there.
He says: "I think that you must confront this racism with deep thinking non-racial methodology. I find that when I am confronted by a person saying, 'I am a white or I am a black', I simply reply that I am a human being. There is usually a hesitancy from their side to go further."
It is one of the piercing tools one can use to begin to unpack racism in our country.
Quite rightly, students are rebelling against colonial values foisted on them by former racists and sometimes by oppressed persons who should know better. The hair-raising stories at exposed Model C schools is a point in question.
When students at one Model C school call for a “black” principal to replace what they say is a racist “white principal", one would ask them whether any “black” principal would be suitable to transform the school. I think Neville’s answer would be that this principal should be replaced by a progressive principal.
At a seminar with the theme, “Can non-racialism exist presently in SA schools?”, hosted by Prof Yusuf Waghid of Stellenbosch University at a Cape Town high school in early 2010, I argued that a school where the community considers themselves to be humans, a non- racial ethos can work successfully. I believe that it has worked well at a high school where I teach.
I remember a student at the school where I teach, who came from Khayelitsha, saying to a train conductor who shouted at her: “That black girl…”
She turned around and said: “I am not black, I am a human being!” How she must have humiliated and disarmed this racist.
I personally believe that non-racialism is a powerful weapon to disarm the racists and contribute to building a nation.
● Isaacs is Principal at South Peninsula High School and is currently under suspension