A Prophecy of Cancer
I wrote this all the way back in June 2015, when RhodesMustFall was in full swing. It was a Facebook post, which I have not edited, except to remove a couple of names. The article referred to, from the online magazine ‘Africa is a Country’, which at that point was the most broadly read magazine by those affiliated with the movement, can be read here. Clearly, my thinking has undergone a massive change, but this was the moment I started to break with the left, and question what I had been taught by the ruling party all my life.
The article in question which triggered this concerned commentary, is one in which the author argues that Beethoven was (half) black. Her argument rests on three pieces of evidence: 1) Beethoven's piano sonatas sound good played with a slightly swung/poly rhythm in the left hand; 2) Beethoven looks slightly negroid in one of his portraits, and 3) he was never entirely pleased with the renditions of his face or his music reproduced in his time.
I want to point out something insignificant first, because this writer has now made it necessary – Beethoven was raised by white Austrians. Regardless of what his ancestry is, rhythm is not genetic, no? Yet the writer makes the argument that the polyrhythmic aspect of certain pieces could not have come from Europe (of course it wasn’t around at the time, but could he not have simply been a bloody genius?). But the argument about his lineage is down to where his potentially illegitimate genetic father might have come from.
My question is, why exactly is the writer going so far out of their way to demonstrate that this man was African by focusing on an element of his character as his most convincing piece of evidence, when the link is only genetic and not cultural? I will grant that the use of a slight swing in the left hand does make for a more powerful rendition of his piano music, but that is kind of besides the point. The arguments, even if you accept them, are very strange indeed – they imply that there is some aspect of his mind that could not have come from a white person. Why?
I’m not here to make an argument in defence of Beethoven as white, that is for you to decide, but it seems important to me to pay attention to the kind of argument used. I think it indicates the sparks of a new kind of racial supremacist thinking, one centred around Africa rather than Europe.
And this, my friends, is significant. This is a very specific issue, and I hope you all can see what I am driving at – it may very well be that Beethoven had a black slave father. But he was not raised with African music, so why would it be pertinent to the character of his musical genius?
The idea of inherent racial characteristics is being embraced by Africanists, BCM and nationalists alike in rejection of liberal values. In doing so, black people run the risk of becoming precisely that which they are fighting. Being that I think of communism as the highest ideal, accusing me of being a liberal would be off-mark, but I believe liberalism was a necessary part of the evolution of human consciousness – taking it seriously and acting on it makes racism, sexism, and indeed any form of discrimination impossible, the reason it failed to do so was that people didn’t take it seriously, and used ‘scientific’, cultural or religious arguments to justify a lack of full commitment to their ideals (see John Lock – a slave-owner, JS MIll – I read ‘On Liberty’ like a bible, but Mill became a hypocrite on race issues irl, using the word ‘savages’ fairly often).
Its drawbacks are failure to recognise class warfare, economic inequalities and injustices inherent to unregulated market systems make it incomplete, but if we are to take liberalism seriously and move on to something better, we need to take it at its best first before we can see its limitations. In America, race consciousness is seen as being part of the liberal tradition, and all the very same ideas of safe spaces (women's’ movement, which is a part of liberalism), as well as most if not all of Steve Biko’s writings are fully includable (is that a word?) under the broad umbrella that is liberal thinking.
What I fear in the new trend of using liberalism as a dirty word is that we lose the principles which make it valuable. Despite the prevalence of racism and unconsciousness in the global white population, it is the liberal tradition which keeps us from committing further crimes of persecution (forget Italy, they still can’t see what’s wrong with fascism) – let Yugoslavia be the lesson – it took nothing more than a single word of solidarity by a single politician with a majority race group which felt persecuted in an area where it was minority to spark a decade of genocide and ethnic cleansing.
Which brings me back to Beethoven. If he is half African, is should merely be interesting, not an issue of magnitude. As long as it matters to us emotionally what the race of someone in the past was in relation to their achievements, we are still slaves to racist ideology. The only way the term ‘racism’ has any meaning is if it describes the belief that races have inherent characters, be it for genetic or cultural reasons, and harbouring feelings of animosity because of it. Racial supremacy then means believing your race is better, for whatever reason, than another. Racial hatred is self-explanatory.
In the USA, the domination of white people has been so complete, not even the most poisonous black supremacy could put a dent in it – it would only feed it. Dylan Roof is case in point – the cops bought him a fucking hot meal to congratulate the little shit. His evil is not unique, and the fact that the majority of American cops are white make it easy for racism to perpetuate violent domination and actively privilege the white population without the need for a formal system to support it.
South Africa is not the same. Our cops are black, representatively – even though more whites apply for the job now that we are not being actively privileged by the state. And that is an important distinction to make – we have obvious ADVANTAGES, that can never be denied, but they are context-dependant, and complex. But there is nobody PRIVILEGING us at a state level. If you want to argue UCT is privileging us, I won’t engage that debate here, but I feel nuance in analysis is important.
Whether or not you believe the prevalence of racism in blacks in reality is significant or not, to abuse these descriptions helps nothing. And white people in South Africa are not scared for nothing. Serbians held an 800 year grudge against Bosnians and made them pay in blood. Apartheid is 40 times as fresh. What happens when anger is accompanied by a sense of superiority?
One can disregard farm murders if you wish, but they are a peculiar thing – urban robberies are often non-violent, and overall, blacks and coloureds receive by far the brunt of violent crime in SA. But for the Boere (not Afrikaners, Boere are actual rural farmers), taking into account that there are fewer than 40 000 farms, 80% ownership by whites meaning 32 000 farms, there have been 3 000 murders, most of which involve sustained torture, meaning 10% at a reasonable estimate have died this way in the past 20 years alone.
Ethnic hatred in South Africa is not entirely irrational (though the wrongness of it is easy to point out) – we target those we believe are currently grieving us or are a threat to our interests. We are a practical people. And calling Xenophobia ‘afrophobia’ is disingenuous and patronising. These people are not possessed by an inability to think for themselves. The reason they don’t target wealthy white foreigners is because they are not competing for the same jobs. It is very simple – poor immigrants provide competition in business and labour, so we chase them away.
In Marikana, local traditional leadership ensures that the local tribe gets jobs over and above the rest of the people applying, as a part of the corrupt neopatrimonialism in this country (search for an article called ‘Neopatrimonialism in Oaxaca province, Mexico’, if it doesn’t ring spookily true, I lose faith in you). This is part of the reason for apartheid, amongst all the stupid religious-based superiority and evil nonsense, was embedded the very logical if overblown fear of domination by the native majority should they relinquish control.
Let me point you to the Hungary of the interwar period – Jews counted for 7% of the population, yet held all but 3 seats on the stock exchange, owned all the banking institutions, half the law profession, and most businesses and professional degrees. The population’s reaction to the financial crisis was much like the rest of Europe – global social revolution was the realm of the crazed idealist. "What does 'workers of the world unite!’ matter to me? I’m German! We need a German National Socialism." They decided that rather than abolish industry and private property, they merely needed to control it, manage it for the interests of their race, to wrest them from Jews and foreigners and aristocrats.
And they meant it. And so do many of us – we take the powerful, insane but beautiful ideals of socialism and communism and cut them down to size to fit into our racial narratives, in a country where unlike with the Jews, whites did real crimes, much like the Tutsi in Rwanda, who were the autocratic and brutal tools of colonial rule, and represented a similar proportion of the population with similar undeserved privileges until they were put to the sword.
Black students at UCT, many being middle class from good schools, can no longer show full solidarity from a pure class perspective, and instead defend their political interests from a race-as-class perspective (using ‘intersectionality’ as joinery). Italian, Hungarian and German Fascists did similarly – everybody in those days was so proud of how classless the ranks of the Nazi party, and the Fascist party were – class distinctions seemed to evaporate, and workers were told that soon they would be able to afford pearls and fine suits when they got power and won their race’s birthright.
Many on this campus seem to think of revolution in surprisingly narrow terms. Their occasional imitation of American liberal student identity politics combined with Biko and Fanon’s decoupling of racial identity from empirically observable race serves to empower the voices of black students who are pursuing their racial interests. White voices have no place, and I can understand that many of us are perhaps not speaking the right jargon, or are not exactly literate on these issues, but being that there is no way in to discussions, being that whiteness is ‘loud’ and ‘oppressive’ by nature, even if we did have insights, they have no place. And arguing with the outputs of organisations like RMF makes us politically incorrect, or racist. The logical extension of this is that white political involvement cannot be allowed unless it is uncritically supportive. Which, if we are consistent, should extend to the national level, which means white people should have no right to freedom of speech or voting rights, indeed no academic freedoms.
There are non-blacks I have met, some of whom may pass for white in this country, who now identify, or wish to be identified as black, rather than whatever they happen to be empirically. Why? It doesn’t make them look black walking down the street, they will still be seen the same, except with a skeef look because, why would you want to represent as something you aren’t? Why should it matter? (These questions are not merely rhetorical, this is a serious emotional issue for many people). Authentic representation is a big deal. In fact it is the most dominant theme behind ‘Dear White People’ a seriously good film which I highly recommend.
Almost every socially conscious white person in SA is ashamed of their skin. I know people who have suicidal thoughts, severe anxiety because of it (or maybe it just gives shape to pre-existing mental issues, what do I know). Some people of course, are still trapped in apartheid – when I was in the looney bin at Valkenberg I met several coloureds who said they were, or at least wished to be, white (“white is alright” said any time I defended someone or showed basic human empathy). When in NW Province, I met uncle toms, "ja-baas"es, entrenched poverty of expectation and even blacks who had fully internalised the old caste system and believed i should be paid more for the same work. I felt white Privilege (the real thing, more than mere advantage), being promoted and hired explicitly for my skin colour.
But we still go on for the need for uncritical and simplistic redress, observing monolithic racial characters, judging ‘whiteness’ as an evil, instead of trying to more effectively wipe it out by dissolving the conceptual boundaries and stop caring about what race we are, being proud of what we are, and not standing for injustice, prejudice and ill-treatment of anyone anywhere (a monumental task, I know, but I have high standards. And this is not to dismiss the need for reform or redress). It is why I initially stood with RMF – the pride, the upsurge of personal dignity warmed my heart – seeing my fellow countrymen (and countrywomen) standing up for themselves and taking pride in what they are, unashamed to speak truth to power.
But we learned the wrong lessons about Rhodes. Instead of seeing him as a warning against what happens when a powerful and wealthy businessman abuses state power and violence to further his own interest (Ramaphosa, Marikana), we saw him as a symbol purely of white oppression, and found we could project this new monochrome dichotomy onto anything, seeing only victim and victor, an endless and immutable cycle of oppression the consequences of which whites cannot and apparently should not ever be able to shed.
This is not how it works. The cycle is mutable. The only movements which make true revolution are those who believe in truly universal human values. These are also the most dangerous, but they mean real change. America’s revolution made exceptions to protect class interest, and perpetuated racist, classist forms of domination. But the Haitians, Chinese, French and Russians, violent and crazy as they became under the heat of global persecution, economic embargo and military invasion, changed the world. They pursued universal values. They failed when they put up roadblocks. Revolution needn’t happen overnight, but it should be complete, universal in attention and scope, and it should be global. Some of us are too weak-willed, prideful, prejudiced and cowardly to take our real human values seriously.
But it really is so simple, Empathy, Honesty, Courage and Curiosity suffice to propel any human being to eventual perfection, and it is only our weakness of will preventing us. Ignorance can be cured, but ignobility of spirit is a poison tree, and it kills with its roots. Beethoven’s potential blackness should be a curiosity, but if he becomes an argument for racial superiority, we plant the seeds of that tree, just as we are so very busy cutting down the one planted by the thuggery of colonialism.
We know what the terrain looks like, most of us at this point in history have pretty good maps unless our eyes are shut. But let us not forget where we are going, because even a slight detour could cost us the journey. We all have souls, and Beethoven had more soul than any of us (my god, read the man’s love letters, his devotion to democracy and revolution – he tore up his dedication to Napoleon when the man crowned himself) – he revolutionised the entire world of music in the West. If he was half black, does that make either his white or black brethren a tenth the man he was? Only if we achieve what he did, and that should be our prime cause, whether it be in the arts, politics, love or sport – perfect revolution.
Because here’s the thing – there are still white racists, ignorant and unconscious but well-meaning white liberals, and apathetic whites untroubled by black plight. But they are on their way out, they shall learn or be shunned. And apartheid will never come back – it can’t. There may be tiny holdouts here and there, but it is the fading tarnish on an increasingly shiny veneer. I do not speak to the present, but to the future, so I hope this eventually becomes relevant. I just hope we don’t polish through the gloss and ruin the job.
And as students we have a high responsibility – to speak truth to power. Later in life we will have responsibilities, we will have less time, less access to information, more apathy and cynicism. While we are young and smart, let’s tell it from the mountain, and not just the well-trod road of white cultural domination (it does have to be addressed, i fully agree, but hopefully we won’t throw out the baby with the bathwater, nor narrow our scope) but also state politics – our SRC can make statements about Israel (with which I almost entirely agree, but I’m a 1-state-solution guy) but say nothing of the violent kleptocracy that grinds the poor further into the tread of old oppressions through neglect, entitlement, violence and cynicism, increases wealth/class division and threatens to send us into recession and still delivers Bantu education while fostering the xenophobia and chauvinism of our most benighted brethren.
The simple B/W narrative does not allow us to analyse the problems we face as a society in great enough detail, with subtle enough nuance. It is a hammer where we need a screwdriver, and we are stripping the thread from our screws on what is in reality a very fragile joint between old enemies. And this does not end in SA. This extends to the world. we should be able to one day project these values to our neighbours with open invitations to join the march to progress, instead of turning a blind eye to archaic tyrannies like kings, races, genders and dusty books of bronze-age mythology.
I have more, but I’m tired. If you all wish to comment, the debate I wish to open focuses on what I picked out in the article below. I am sincerely interested in what all of you have to say on this, particularly [tag redacted] and [tag redacted]. I am simply seeing red flags is all. And not the kind of red flags I like.
The two friends I tagged in this story responded with laughter and mockery. They then proceeded to tell everybody who would listen that I was a white supremacist a mentally unstable member of the Alt Right. People crossed the street to avoid me after that. Well, white people did at least. Many blacks smugly reminded me the revolution was coming, and that it would be bloody, and several denounced me in a hail of exterminationist rhetoric. Shortly after my writing this article concerning my fears of black supremacy, protest leaders began openly using genocidal slogans and marching cries. Not a single person objected, as if it was the most ordinary thing in the world.
Two years later, after Fallism had become the unquestioned dominant ideology of South African education, I revisited the matter.