As South Africa marks Human Rights Day, March 21 in remembrance of the Sharpeville Massacre of 1960, the question stands: has the power relations picture changed? Margaret Thatcher said there were a lot of nobodies in the UK who are somebodies in SA. Applying sanctions would increase the number of nobodies in the UK. Thatcher’s rationale for opposing sanctions. A nobody in the UK, a British citizen angry with the Monarchy Phil Craig, is here in South Africa demonstrating audacity to advocate for the independence of the Western Cape from the rest of the Republic of South Africa. Craig is white. Anyone black, from South Africa, doing the same in the UK, is beyond imagination.
Margate Thatcher’s US counterpart and former actor Ronald Reagan dressed his opposition to sanctions with a phrase: “Constructive engagement.” Black liberation was an impediment to business as usual. Today, the dehumanized have a vote, rehumanisation is an impediment still to bother businesses about as priority is an investment, (economic) growth, and jobs.
The dispensers are clear as are recipients as both assumed their respective superordinate and subordinate positions in a ‘democratic’ South Africa forever irritated with calls of equality to the provocation of US 47th President Donald Trump who has found amazing friends in the continuity of the status in the consensus expressed in any language including Afrikaans and English for the preservation of white privilege.
There can be no common and true humanity in the presence of inequality even when papered with that illusive word democracy whose periodic elections are conducted by continuing order of not changing economic policy for business to equally continue as usual as a condition for investment, growth and jobs for dehumanized voters. What is a ‘human right’ to a dehumanized being whose rehumanisation endeavours are equated ‘as treating other people badly’? What does Human Rights mean to the dehumanized whose perennial black condition the status quo neither see nor hear?
Treating other people well constitutes the immutability of white privilege. Tempering with white privilege amounts to treating other people badly. That is the reigning rationale for investor confidence; economic growth and jobs promise for the ungrateful dehumanized voters.
SA is still in arrears with that great great dream of Biko’s to give the world a human face. That human face is not on the agenda of Trump be it in Afrikaans or English wherever in the world where white privilege is a no-go area for change. How easily liberation gets sanctioned than oppressive dispossessors. Is simply being human and living in a humane world a big ask to make? Friday, March 21, 2025 – NewsSA