It has been a while since I have been properly writing here, but I promise I have not disappeared. I have simply been doing some real work instead of writing about it, and the past few weeks have been incredibly busy.
Lelo Klaas & Associates finally has a live website, which has been one of the projects keeping me occupied. Please go and have a look. And since I am already shamelessly advertising myself, if you need a website for your business, you know where to find me. A basic website starts at around R3,500.
I also upgraded the website for Aquarium & Ponds. If you need an aquarium or pond installation, I genuinely recommend them. They are clients, but they are also people I have known for a long time, and I trust their integrity enough to put my own name behind the recommendation.
Then there is Klaasic Prints, which has also just gone live after taking up a rather impressive amount of my time. There may still be one or two teething issues, but it is live, it is growing, and I am very happy to finally have it out there.
So yes, I have been busy.
But apparently Fadiel Adams was determined to give me something to write about.
Just when I thought I had processed enough after watching his appearance at the Madlanga Commission, I came across another video.
This time, Adams was responding to people on Facebook who, according to him, believed that he should apologise to Brigadier Dineo Mokwele.
Fair enough. He is entitled to respond.
Except his response somehow took us from the question of whether Fadiel Adams owes Brigadier Mokwele an apology to Black people, Coloured people, BEE, unemployment and CVs allegedly being thrown away by the Department of Labour.
And I sat there thinking:
How did Black people get into this?
Seriously.
Make it make sense.
An Apology Is About the People Involved
The question being raised was apparently whether Adams should apologise to Mokwele.
That is a fairly straightforward issue.
If somebody believes Adams made allegations about Mokwele that were subsequently shown to be incorrect, they are entitled to argue that he owes her an apology. Adams is equally entitled to explain why he believes he does not.
We can then look at the facts and form our own opinions.
But Adams responded by asking, in substance, how many Black people have apologised to Coloured people who are out of work because of BEE and how many Black people have apologised to Coloured people whose CVs were allegedly thrown away by the Department of Labour.
I genuinely do not understand the logic.
If I have wronged somebody, my responsibility towards that person does not disappear because another person who happens to share my race has not apologised for something completely unrelated.
Accountability is not racial inheritance.
I am not responsible for something another Black person did simply because we are both Black. A Coloured South African is not responsible for the actions of every other Coloured South African. An Indian South African does not inherit responsibility for everything another Indian South African has ever done.
That would be absurd.
So why, when discussing an apology involving specific individuals, are ordinary Black South Africans suddenly being handed a collective invoice?
There Is Also a Problem With the BEE Argument
The BEE part of the argument confused me for another reason.
Under South Africa’s Broad-Based Black Economic Empowerment framework, “black people” is a generic legal term that includes Africans, Coloureds and Indians who meet the relevant citizenship requirements. Qualifying Chinese South Africans are also recognised for B-BBEE purposes following a court ruling.
In other words, Coloured South Africans are not excluded from the definition of people B-BBEE is intended to benefit.
That is important because we cannot have an intelligent conversation about policy while starting from the premise that BEE simply means Black African South Africans receiving opportunities at the expense of Coloured South Africans.
That is not what the policy says.
The question we should be asking is whether our government has actually delivered the economic transformation these policies were intended to create.
That is a conversation worth having.
And perhaps that is where our anger should be directed.
BEE Is Government Policy
Ordinary Black South Africans did not sit around a table and write BEE legislation.
Ordinary Coloured South Africans did not create South Africa’s unemployment crisis.
Ordinary Indian South Africans do not decide how government departments implement employment policies.
Government does.
Government creates policy. Government departments implement it. Public institutions are responsible for following the law. Officials make decisions. Regulators are supposed to provide oversight.
So if a policy is being implemented unlawfully, hold the institution responsible.
If somebody’s CV was genuinely discarded because of their race, investigate it and hold the people responsible accountable.
If transformation programmes are not reaching the people they were designed to reach, demand answers from government.
If corruption is stealing opportunities from ordinary South Africans, prosecute the people stealing those opportunities.
Those are legitimate fights.
But telling ordinary Black South Africans that they somehow owe Coloured South Africans an apology for BEE makes absolutely no sense to me.
What Exactly Must an Unemployed Black Person Apologise For?
This is where the argument becomes particularly uncomfortable.
South Africa has a devastating unemployment problem.
There are Black South Africans who are unemployed. There are Black graduates sitting at home. There are Black families living in poverty. There are Black children growing up in communities where economic opportunity remains painfully limited.
There are also Coloured South Africans who are unemployed, Coloured graduates looking for work and Coloured families living in poverty.
These realities exist at the same time.
So when someone asks how many Black people have apologised to Coloured people for unemployment, I genuinely want to know:
What exactly must an unemployed Black South African apologise for?
Being unemployed too? Being poor too? Sending CVs and getting rejected too? Living in a township too? Being failed by government too?
We have somehow created a political conversation in which people experiencing the consequences of a broken economy are being encouraged to blame other people experiencing the consequences of the same broken economy.
How does that help anybody?
We Can Talk About Coloured Communities Without Creating a Black Enemy
I want to be particularly clear about this because conversations about race become defensive very quickly.
There are legitimate issues affecting Coloured communities in South Africa.
Those issues deserve attention.
If Coloured communities believe government policy is failing them, government should answer. If people believe employment practices are unlawful, those practices should be investigated. If communities feel economically neglected, politicians should be forced to explain what they are doing about it.
None of that requires pretending that those problems were created by ordinary Black African South Africans.
You can advocate fiercely for Coloured South Africans without manufacturing a Black enemy.
In exactly the same way, advocating for Black South Africans should never require dismissing the experiences of Coloured South Africans.
We should be mature enough to do both.
Our Government Is Corrupt and We Are All Paying for It
Perhaps this is the part of the conversation that frustrates me most.
South Africans spend enormous amounts of energy fighting one another while corruption continues to eat away at the resources that are supposed to improve all our lives.
Money disappears. Projects fail. Municipalities collapse. Infrastructure deteriorates. Jobs never materialise. Public institutions fail.
And somehow the person we are encouraged to blame is another ordinary South African who is also wondering how they are going to pay their electricity bill.
No.
Our anger needs better direction.
If government has failed to create enough employment, hold government accountable. If corruption has stolen money intended for development, hold corrupt officials accountable. If transformation policies are not producing the economic participation they promised, interrogate those policies and the institutions responsible for implementing them.
But do not convince me that the struggling person living twenty kilometres away from me is responsible simply because their skin looks different from mine.
We Are Not Each Other’s Government
I think sometimes we forget this.
The unemployed person in Khayelitsha is not responsible for employment policy. The unemployed person in Mitchells Plain is not responsible for economic growth. The family struggling in Soweto does not control Treasury. The family struggling in Bonteheuwel does not run the Department of Employment and Labour.
We are not each other’s government.
Yet somehow ordinary South Africans keep being asked to account for failures created by people sitting in positions of power.
And while we fight among ourselves, those people remain remarkably comfortable.
That should bother all of us.
This Is Why the Rhetoric Concerns Me
I cannot say what is inside Fadiel Adams’s heart. I do not know him personally.
What I can respond to is what he chooses to say publicly.
And when a question about whether he personally owes Brigadier Mokwele an apology becomes a discussion about what Black people supposedly owe Coloured people, I think it is fair to question that rhetoric.
Because words matter.
When public figures frame the struggles of Coloured South Africans in opposition to Black African South Africans, they help create the impression that one community’s progress requires another community’s loss.
South Africa does not need more of that.
We already have enough racial suspicion. We already have enough inequality. We already have enough anger.
What we need is accountability.
Ask the Right People for the Apology
If a government department unlawfully discriminated against somebody, that department should answer.
If an official threw away somebody’s CV because of race, that official should answer.
If government policy has failed a community, government should answer.
If corruption has stolen opportunities from South Africans, the people responsible should answer.
And if one individual has wronged another individual, that individual should answer for their own actions.
That is accountability.
It should not require an entire racial group to apologise on somebody else’s behalf.
Perhaps that is what bothered me most about the video.
We started with a very simple question about whether one person owed another person an apology and somehow ended up reopening South Africa’s racial wounds.
Meanwhile, unemployment remains high. Poverty remains. Corruption remains. Government failure remains.
And ordinary Black and Coloured South Africans continue trying to survive.
Maybe instead of asking struggling South Africans to apologise to one another, we should start demanding more answers from the people we actually elected to fix these problems.
Because the person struggling next to you is not automatically responsible for your struggle.
And we are not each other’s government.
