Political and Socio-Cultural Africanization is a legitimate re-organizing of state and society in South Africa because it is an African country not a ‘Western” country.
After the Apartheid regime and all of its negative effects on the black population of South Africa – change had to come. The change had to be brought about by the African people. The change had to be implemented by the people who went through the oppression and degradation of Apartheid. These are the people who know how it feels to be a third class citizen and should be entrusted with bringing change that will put everyone on the same plain field. To achieve this, there has to be some segregation (economic wise) the previously advantaged have to take a backseat and let more privileges (economic and social) go to the previously disadvantaged (the black population). To lessen the burden on government in finding an appropriate way of doing this the focal point should and is representation. Moreover, the notion of South Africa being a homogenous melting pot of a nation should not be thought of until the ills of the previous regime have been purged from society. With that notion on hold there needs to be a different way of thinking of things in South Africa – I suggest that it be Africanization. Africanization would not only allow for this economic segregation to occur peacefully but should be at the forefront of South African politics and its society since South Africa is an African country.
The concept of Africanization has to be examined first, before one can start seeing how the state and social re-organization would work according to this concept makes sense. The definition Garcia gives to Africanization is, “It refers to the process by which knowledge about Africa is rendered as ‘more African’” (Garcia, 2006; 86). The definition puts a microscope on being more African – one cannot help but wonder what is being more African? This could bring about a lot of problems, a variety of people consider themselves African. Granted in South Africa there are South Africans of every tone, does this definition leave the white, Indian and Asian people out of the African bracket? These are just some questions South Africa has to come to terms with when evaluating how the wealth redistribution has to occur. There is a call to give the land back to the Africans – who are these Africans? It is suggested that this calls for the land to be returned to the native Africans whose ancestry goes back before the merchant ships anchored on the shores of Cape Town. I suggest that a further more detailed answer for the question of Africanization which would be allowing politicians and citizens of South Africa to impose their own “assumptions, traditions, expectations and preferences” on their country. This is why Africanization becomes a legitimate way of re-organizing society and state – before Africanization there was no room for these assumptions, expectations and preferences to come about (Falola, 2002; 1). However, when one looks at Africanization it allows for Africans to come up with African solutions to their own problems hence – Africanization.
This is then a perfect starting point when relating Africanization to South Africa. No other country in the west or elsewhere can claim to have gone through what this nation has gone through. So the question that lingers in the mind is then why necessitate ‘Western’ ideals on this intrinsically African state? What can these ideals teach South Africa when they (Europe) never went through Apartheid? What does the Western ideology know about; the majority of the population (melanin wise) live on less than 10% of the land that happened to belong to their forefathers and was cruelly stripped from them and given to the minority – which then decided to force the people into rural communities and imposed hut taxes to get dirt poor labour. The simple answer is that these ideals would not be able to address these grievances and thus bring the need for new ideals or ways of thinking. I suggest that the ‘Western’ ideals would fail South Africa because there has never been a need for Europeans to have Affirmative Action or Black Economic Empowerment for that matter.
When former President Mbeki in his speech in 1998 utters the words, “we are interested that our country responds to… a common fight to eradicate the legacy of Apartheid” one cannot wonder who this ‘we’ is (Hadland, 1999; 248). These words should resound to any South African around the time the speech was given because the history and future of the country depended on the people’s cooperation in eradicating these ills. Moreover, as Lushaba says, “[Apartheid] was a skewed social engineering process, which involved constructing and deconstructing social identities…” (Lushaba, 2005; 111). These constructed identities are exactly why the new discourse of Africanization is needed – to air a new way of thinking from a newly formed identity. It is after all these identities which will have to be used to economically segregate South Africa until the legacy of Apartheid is erased to borrow Mbeki’s language. The problem with this notion is granted, when will we know when policies like BEE and AA are no longer needed, and more importantly when will the legacy of Apartheid ever be eradicated?
With these questions in mind these policies – BEE and AA for a South African might seem to be the logical next step after Apartheid. This however, I suggest would not be as easily established if we were trapped in the western discourse and not the discourse of Africanization. For any South African these policies are seen to be, “leveling the playing field” for the previously disadvantaged (being the people of coulor) (Alexander, 2007; 92).
In conclusion South Africa is still an unequal society, thus the melting pot society all nations aspire for is far from being realized and I can’t seem to imagine a day that all important rainbow nation Tutu dreams of being realized. The reality is that the nation of South Africa at the moment deserves policies which are designed to uplift the communities who were oppressed. This might mean keeping the labels of black, white, Indian, and coloured negative creations of Apartheid – some of which have already been used when creating the policy of Black Economic Empowerment. Furthermore, I suggest that segregation even if it is economic segregation is needed for South Africa to finally reach the point where the previously advantaged don’t need to be oppressed in the nature BEE or whatever name you give these policies and AA entail.
To be finished
Bibliography:
Toyin Falola and Christian Jennings, (2002) "Introduction" in Africanizing Knowledge: African Studies across the Disciplines, ed. Toyin Falola and Christian Jennings (New Brunswick, NJ), 1.
Cheryl Hendricks and Lwazi Lushaba, (2005) From National Liberation to Democratic Renaissance in Southern Africa, (Dakar, Senegal)
Esperanza Brizuela-García, (2006) The History of Africanization and the Africanization of History, African Studies Association: History in Africa, Vol. 33 (2006), pp. 85-100
Hadland A and Rantao J, (199) The Life and Times of Thabo Mbeki, Johannesburg: Zebrai Press.
Neville Alexander, (2007) Affirmative Action and the perpetual of racial identities in post Apartheid South Africa Transformation, 63, 1-17
