Narrow+Nationalist+thinking+Devan+Pillay+Business+Day

Business Day, Letters, Johannesburg, 24 October 2006
=Narrow nationalist thinking=


 * Devan Pillay**

I enjoyed Peter Bruce’s understated but effective take on SABC CE Dali Mpofu’s rant against critics in City Press, The Thick End of the Wedge (October 23).

That Mpofu chose to pepper his lengthy justification with such blatant and base distortions of who his critics are is disturbing. He knows very well that his white “right-wing” and black “fellow traveller” critics include the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu), the South African Communist Party (SACP), the Young Communist League and the Freedom of Expression Institute (whose leading members are to the left of the SACP).

By distorting the truth with such venom, is Mpofu living up to Winnie Mandela’s charge that he is a “compulsive, sophisticated liar”, or has he become a narrow (read right-wing) nationalist like SABC board member Thami Mazwai, a former Pan Africanist Congress member?

During the liberation struggle, right-wing narrow nationalism represented the outer fringe of liberation thinking. It depicted the struggle in simple black-white terms, and sought equally simplistic racial solutions. Another term for this is race or ethnic mobilisation — a tactic that brings self-seeking elites to power on the backs of the poor and downtrodden.

The African National Congress (ANC), the SACP and Cosatu, on the other hand, sought to avoid the dangers of narrow nationalism. They saw the struggle was not only about racism, but also about socioeconomic inequality and sexism. They recognised that the value of a person lies not in the colour of their skin, but in the quality of their actions.

Such a broad, humanistic vision infuses the founding principles of our constitutional democracy, including our public broadcaster.

Disturbingly, as black elites vie to replace white elites, narrow nationalist thinking is becoming more mainstream. It is the same cornered- rat mind-set as that of Zanu (PF) leaders who, when faced with criticism from the SACP and Cosatu last year, labelled them “agents of western imperialism”.

As ANC secretary-general Kgalema Motlanthe said recently, labels are good for whisky bottles, not for mature public discourse.

Devan Pillay, University of the Witwatersrand


 * From: http://www.businessday.co.za/articles/opinion.aspx?ID=BD4A300866**

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