There are myths that societies tell themselves over and over again. These myths, some corrosive, are told because they hold societies together, without which they would cease to exist.
South Africa is no exception. For decades this country has survived by telling itself myths. A popular one is the fetishization of the rainbow nation and its mythical powers, with the intention of escaping history and magically erasing the true ugliness of this nation, without having addressed the unresolved legacy of violence and pain.
Even when we are in the dungeon of darkness, there are stories of triumph that we tell and retell, over and over again. The point is not whether they are true that matters, but how they make us feel when we believe and recite them, which in turn fuels our conviction in these myths.
Even when a white student urinates on a black student’s books and laptop or when Belinda Magor calls for killing blacks, which are an indication that the bond of integration is breaking, we look at each other and convince ourselves that “this is not us, this is not who we are”.
Such delusional thinking will be the end of us because this is us, this is what we are, this is what this country is and has been. South Africa is based on white privilege and black marginalization. All of society is designed that way. We don’t see this because we choose to look away; we choose to believe in a cunning mythical construction of what this nation is.
Rather than confront every incident of racism, we choose to recite necromantic rainbow spells that invoke a sentimental longing for the illusory fantasy of inclusivity and false benevolence. South Africa is called the rainbow nation while the legacy of apartheid is still visible and intact. This country is not free to pretend to be what it is not, and it is a shame.
When the entire existence of a nation depends on a mythical narrative that has little to show for it, the day this narrative is exposed for the farce that it is is the day society falls apart. It is the day this society would be forced to lift the veil and face itself, to see its ugliness.
But what will become of our nation when the fathers of its myths, like Nelson Mandela and Desmond Tutu, are no longer around? It surely hangs by a thread. This is noticeable in the desperate measures to revive their drive with empty slogans. This is absurd. Furthermore, the soul of a free and progressive country depends on the enlightenment and nourishment provided by the spirit of collective humanity. We lack that and that is why the fire is upon us.
Without the myths there is no rainbow nation and without the rainbow nation there is no South Africa. These myths have turned out to be a remedy worse than the disease, since they lack a compendious description and are based on a basic premise whose approach is argued with absolute imagination and is extracted from tenacious pseudotheorems of racial color blindness that failed to change people. and the way they are treated. This color blindness is denying something, it is denying reality. Denying something also means giving way to something else; something you identify with, something accepted, noble, pure, just, and white people have always been interested in the idea of prioritizing white supremacy, no matter the cost.
But the naturalness of the magical powers of white supremacy does not come from the mimicry of execration or imprecation of white dominance, nor from the performance of thaumaturgy, but derives from the wisdom of the physical world, from ingenuity, the recklessness and simplicity of this world; from their correspondence to acts of truculence, pugnacity and belligerence.
South Africans need to look each other in the eye and say: “We are beautiful. And ugly too. Such words must transform not only how we look at ourselves but also how others look at us; how they perceive us through the biases of their intolerance and prejudices.
In order for us to be successful in building a new society, we need to go through an inevitable, deep and transforming salvation that leads to the reordering of our values. This would come from emptying ourselves and rejecting discouragement. This is crucial to lay the foundations for shared optimism; it is a prerequisite for a true rainbow nation.
Bukelani Mboniswa is the author of Paint Me White: The Black Man’s Tragedy Y Rainbow Nation: The Propaganda of Democracy.
