OPINION: I'm white and know there are many Mabel Jansens

I am not ashamed of Mabel Jansen or of what she said about black people. I am white, but I don’t identify with what she said. I don’t know Mabel from a bar of soap. It’s her upbringing, her world-view, her cognitive process, not mine. She must deal with her stuff, by herself.

That does not mean, though, that I am not shocked and concerned. And my shock and concern, I bear as a white person.

I am shocked that a person, as educated, as exposed, coming from as deep in the heart of the white establishment, holds the view, 26 years after the release of Nelson Mandela, that black people are savages.

Because that is what she said.

She might not have meant to say that, but that is what she said. “Murder is not a biggy.” They kill at random and rape their daughters, just for fun.

We might have got all worked up about Thabo Mbeki’s two nations thesis, and the divisions that remain between us, but Mabel’s characterisation of black people confirms precisely what Mbeki said (most) white people think of black people.

Unless of course Mabel is an outlier. An exception to the rule.

Perhaps she just slipped past, unnoticed, studying law, becoming chair of the Pretoria Bar, having an exceptional career in intellectual property law, before she became a judge. No-one saw or heard or noticed that Mabel had these slightly unconventional views on race.

Really?

Of course not. And that’s the part of this entire saga that concerns me. Mabel, if discussed at all by white people, will be made out to be an outlier.

Yet, she’s not. And this I know as a white person.

So let me declare. Some of my best friends are black. Really.

Once upon a time, I was a member of the now defunct (thank goodness) white left. In my younger days I had an office on the 10th floor of Shell House.

But I remain white.

And no, I am not a Samantha Vice (shut up, lie under the bed, and listen for the next 150 years) white person either.

And most of what Gillian Schutte herself has said about race makes me cringe.

I think young Qwabe acted in an infantile way.

And I am genuinely concerned about the rise of an aggressive and chauvinist African nationalism, wishing to cast “the other” as the scapegoat for all that goes wrong.

But I do know something about white people and how we roll. If Mabel Jansen holds those views, many more white people do too.

That means, as it presumably has always meant, that the white community has a problem.

And it matters not whether your people originally came from Leiden or London or Lithuania. It matters not whether you are rich or poor, rural or urban, whether you speak with a thick Reddersburg accent, or with a hot potato acquired at Oxford.

I know it, you know it, we all know it. The white community has got an issue with race. It is wedded to it; it holds it dearly to its bosom. It’s got it like a cancer. And it seems it won’t let go.

And if we didn’t know about this tenacity before (and black people probably did), we know now.

That is what Mabel showed us.

There is something in the white community’s collective DNA that makes it look down on people of colour, perhaps like no one else looks down at anyone else.

It has taught its children a cancerous thing; systematically, systemically, consistently, and relentlessly so, and now its children cannot unlearn what has been taught.

That is what Mabel showed us.

The sad thing is that nothing will be done about it.

There is no leadership left to deal with this.

There is no one left to frame a discussion, and to help to point the way forward.

Former president FW de Klerk is living his fancy new life with his fancy new wife on the Atlantic seaboard.

The leaders, the elders, whoever they are, have headed for the hills. All that is left is silence. Three million individuals with pale skins. Not a community any more.

So when the call gets made, when one of its kind get exposed and embarrassed, we just deny that we’re part of it.

We say, I am just an equities trader living in Saxonwold, with my daughters at a private school, and me and my blonde little wife living our neat little post-modern, post-apartheid existence in the suburb. So leave me alone. I might be white, but Mabel’s stuff is hers to deal with. I don’t want to talk about it.

Which is where we started.

So, sorry Mabel. You’re on your own. Like the paratrooper behind enemy lines who calls HQ but finds the telephone unanswered.

Disavowed and denied. Not one of ours.

Rudolf Mastenbroek is a resident of Johannesburg