The abhorrent South African tradition of denigrating one’s political opponents by mis-labelling them continues unabated under the ANC. Instead of being castigated as being Communists, white opponents of the ANC are now being labelled as racists and black opponents as white apologists.

The first time that I became aware that I might have Communist proclivities was in the Army at 3 SAI Oudshoorn. 

“There is (sic) Communistics (sic) under (sic) you” the Sergeant bellowed at us.

Standing to attention in three rows at 20:00 hours in front of huge storage hangars under which the conspiracy theorists alleged that huge arms caches were stored, we stared dead ahead as the inanities pouring forth from this clearly inebriated PF Sergeant.  The shrieks and scream vibrated and resounded across the extemporised parade ground.

Compulsory National Service in the 1970’s

On and on he droned. Apparently in his fetid mind, some infraction committed by something in Charlie Company could only have arisen due to malice. The underlying cause of that “malevolence” he ascribed to Communist agitators.

To atone for our sins, it was “straf parade” [punishment parade]

On completing my 9 months Army training, I immediately commenced work as an articled clerk at Starling, Treasure and Blaker. That meant attending lectures at night at UPE first at Bird Street and then the following year at the recently opened Summerstrand Campus.

Being strictly an Afrikaans university under the illiberal control of Chancellor Ernst Marais, the head of the local Broederbond, the conservative viewpoint permeated the University’s ethos and being. White shirts & ties together with “short back and sides” haircuts were the order of the day. Random hair inspections were the outcome of the policies of “die hoerskool by die see” as the soeties used to call it.

Certain lecturers such as the Handelsreg dosent, even commenced the lecture with a prayer. Mike, Des and I never complied with any of these regulations. Our saving grace was that our only contact with the university was to attend lectures and never to participate in any extramural activities like the rest of the students.

UPE’s Campus

Then one day, a fellow student in my class by the name of Johan BXXX whose father was a math’s lecturer came to have a political chat with me. With my shoulder length hair and my coloured shirt I was obviously not a patriotic South African. One of the first questions that he posed – I clearly remember it to this day – was whether I was a proper [ware] South African. As my family’s roots in Port Elizabeth stretched back to the 1820 Settlers and thus being one of the first whites in PE, I most definitely considered myself to be a ware Suid Afrikaan.
Johan BXXX was clearly unconvinced. How could this antithesis of the conservative UPE student be a committed South African especially when I believed that one day the blacks would obtain full political rights in South African? When I averred that this power hand-over would be made by none other than the Nasionale Partie itself, he became apoplectic. How! ONTMOOINTLIK Impossible. “Ek is boere seun and ons Volk sal dit nie toelaat nie” was his incandescent reply.

Then he thought that he had me stymied.

“When will this come to pass?” he incredulously enquired.

“Who knows, I replied. That is irrelevant. But prepare for that day.”

As only Communists would utter such diabolical and radical statements, I had to be a Communist. Instead of being ashamed at being mislabelled, I pitied the narrow non-introspective verkrampte viewpoint of this supposedly intelligent person.

I might have been naïve in expecting an Afrikaner in that milieu to engage me in an open ended debate about South Africa’s but I certainly was no Communist.

Instead I was an average white youth with sufficient savvy to recognise that the existing political dispensation in South Africa was untenable and unsustainable. If the truth be told, in spite of recognising the inevitability of this eventuality, I nonetheless was quite apprehensive about its implications.

My one abiding hope in the transition to democracy during the 1990’s was that all races would commence the journey to acceptance of one another as equals without any racial profiling and tagging. In this I have been sorely disappointed.

Firstly the requirement to declare one’s race became mandatory under the various BEE Codes. Even the SA Institute of Chartered Accountants has forced me to do so.

Then came a reality. In those days, the role of Financial Director also included that of HR. In this role I often had to chair appeals to Disciplinary Enquiries. Within a short period, it became evident that the defence in most cases would be that the real reason why the Company was disciplining a worker for theft, non-performance or whatever was that (White) Management was racist or that the white boss hated blacks.

That attitude has subsequently spilled over into society in general and the ANC in particular. Whenever malfeasance linked to the ANC in some way is exposed, one of the first lines of defence if the person is white is that they are being racist directly or that they fall to understand black customs and traditions. The Race Card even became the favourite party trick of Julius Malema when he was head of the ANC Youth League.

I had a classic experience at work recently. I overheard two black colleagues talking. The one was complaining to the other that their leave or loan – I could not quite discern which – had been declined. Eventually they decided on an elegant solution: accuse the boss of being a racist!!

The whites in South Africa – me included – might well be too naïve in expecting the blacks to be prosecuted for criminal acts that they commit but that does not imply that they are racists.

An interesting study into inter-racial attitudes conducted last year by the HSRC confirms my suspicion that most whites are now accepting of their black brethen. Their previous antagonism and non-acceptance of blacks in social settings has steadily mutated into embracing them figuratively. What is quite quixotic is the attitudes of the blacks towards whites. The majority are now distrustful of whites and their motives. This is a fundamental shift in attitudes with whites’ attitudes being modified from avoidance, to grudging acceptance to a live-and-let-live attitude which prevails today.

I might be too harsh in expecting the laws, standards and norms of behaviour in South Africa to be adhered to but if that implicates me in being  a racist, then I openly admit to being one.

If so, that implies that the definition of a racist in the ANC controlled South Africa is merely a white who has the gall to oppose the ANC in the same way that I was labelled as Communist in my youth.

This method of silencing opposition to one’s viewpoint is the sole argument of an opponent whose only form of defence is not a rational reasoned rebuttal but rather invective to malign one by impugning one’s motives.

That is the method of a scoundrel

More’s the pity if rational discourse is substituted with baser courser vilification.