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<h1 class="gmail-headline__title">What Happened To The Reconcilation Project?</h1>
<h2 class="gmail-headline__subtitle">The reconciliation project conceptualised by Nelson Mandela’s administration in the mid-90s is in deep trouble.</h2> </div>
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<span class="gmail-timestamp__date--published">27/09/2017 03:59 SAST</span>
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<strong>Updated</strong>
27/09/2017 03:59 SAST
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<a class="gmail-author-card__details__name" href="http://www.huffingtonpost.co.za/author/verne-harris">
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Verne Harris
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<span class="gmail-author-card__microbio gmail-desktop-only">
Director of Archive and Dialogue at the Nelson Mandela Foundation
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JN/ CLH/ Reuters Photographer/ Reuters
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Chairman of the Truth and Reconciliation
Commission [TRC] Archbishop Desmond Tutu [3rd R] hands over the TRC
report to South Africa's President Nelson Mandela [2nd L] at the State
Theater Building in Pretoria.
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<p>The reconciliation project conceptualised by
Nelson Mandela's administration in the mid-90s is in deep trouble. The
controversy that has swirled around Tumi Morake and Jacaranda FM is but a
small symptom of a deep-seated malaise in the body politic.</p>
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<p>In
popular memory, Madiba's reconciliation project has become interwoven
with Archbishop Tutu's rainbow nation and the narratives of forgiveness.
The evidence shows, instead, that for Madiba reconciliation was about a
hard negotiating of practical ways to learn simply to get on together.
And it was to be rooted in a restructuring of society.</p>
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<p>This
restructuring demanded a fundamental redistribution of wealth and
privilege through a range of strategies for restitution, reparation and
transformation. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission [TRC] was but
one of many special instruments designed to effect such change.</p>
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<p>Of
course, the TRC could only become such an instrument if its research and
investigation were used as a springboard for continuing restructuring
work. Its amnesty process could only become meaningful if it were to be
followed by the prosecution of those who failed to get amnesty.</p>
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<p>But
the state walked away from the TRC. The latter's recommendations were
never responded to by government. The springboard was not allowed to
have 'spring'.</p>
<p>The same could be said of BEEE. And
of the land reform programme. And of the RDP. And of employment equity
outside the state. And of a language policy recognising eleven official
languages. I could go on –- the list is very long.</p>
<blockquote class="gmail-pull-quote"><span class="gmail-quote">Reconciliation needs to start all over again.</span></blockquote><p>What went wrong?</p>
<p>I think we need to reckon with the
mistakes that were made during Madiba's presidency. For instance, the
embrace of neoliberalism for macroeconomic planning was inordinately
hasty and intimate. Another example -- too much of the institutional
transformation at the time didn't go much beyond affirmative action. So:
change the personnel but leave the systems in place.</p>
<p>I
think we need to reckon with the legacy of the Mbeki era -- years in
which the TRC was very deliberately buried, both transformation and
service delivery were hampered by inappropriate cadre deployment, and
anti-corruption strategies were ineffective.</p>
<p>And,
of course, we have to reckon with the Zuma years, during which
everything has been subordinated to the exigencies of wealth extraction,
patronage and the 'capture' of state institutions. Underlying all these
phenomena, I would argue, is a seduction of political elites by
capital.</p>
<p>Not
surprisingly, the private sector remains largely unreconstructed and
is, arguably, the engine of racism in South Africa. By racism, I mean
that apparatus of power which excludes and in other ways oppress Black
people. Whiteness exercises enormous power. 'White monopoly capital'
[along with other forms of capital] does exist.</p>
<p>Reconciliation needs to start all over again.</p>
<p>And we must begin with the
restructuring of society. Wealth, in the broadest sense, must be
redistributed. Restitution, reparation and transformation need to be our
watchwords. The private sector has to be reimagined as a public
resource no matter how private it is.</p>
<p>White
South Africans have to do a lot more than checking their privilege -–
they have to give it up. Their claims to being African will sound
hollow, if not ridiculous, until they demonstrate a willingness to learn
and a readiness to belong rather than own.</p>
<blockquote class="gmail-pull-quote"><span class="gmail-quote">The time for Black Consciousness is now. All South Africans would be well-advised to listen.</span></blockquote><p>Tumi Morake got it just right. White South Africans have to stop trying to share a stolen bicycle. They must give it up.</p>
<p>I
often wonder what Steve Biko would be saying today. Beyond the
specificities of 2017, I think his message would be the same. The time
for Black Consciousness is now. All South Africans would be well-advised
to listen.</p>
<p>In
1997 I was a member of the transformation unit at the National
Archives. Our attempts then to dislodge the hegemony of the English
language and of Western epistemologies was being frustrated. Twenty
years later I'm in a structure of civil society which is striving for
success in challenging exactly the same hegemony in its own formal
institutional spaces.</p>
<p>We have to move faster than this.</p>
<p><em>Verne Harris is the Director of Archive and Dialogue at the Nelson Mandela Foundation</em></p><p><a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.co.za/verne-harris/what-happened-to-the-reconcilation-project_a_23223150">http://www.huffingtonpost.co.za/verne-harris/what-happened-to-the-reconcilation-project_a_23223150</a><br><em></em></p><br>-- <br><div class="gmail_signature">**************************************<br>N.b.: Listing on the lgpolicy-list is merely intended as a service to its members<br>and implies neither approval, confirmation nor agreement by the owner or sponsor of the list as to the veracity of a message's contents. Members who disagree with a message are encouraged to post a rebuttal, and to write directly to the original sender of any offensive message. A copy of this may be forwarded to this list as well. (H. Schiffman, Moderator)<br><br>For more information about the lgpolicy-list, go to <a href="https://groups.sas.upenn.edu/mailman/" target="_blank">https://groups.sas.upenn.edu/mailman/</a><br>listinfo/lgpolicy-list<br>*******************************************</div>
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