The fair Cape for whites

Cape Town remains a contentious subject. It stokes racial hostility. Blacks bemoan exclusion, something that whites dismiss as an indication of racial-obsession. To them apparently race no longer matters, while blacks see this beautiful city as a stubborn embodiment of racial injustice.

Last week’s conversations about the ANC’s birthday celebrations in the city were no different. The ruling party decried that freedom hadn’t arrived in Cape Town, while the DA touts the city as the epitome of the non-racial future we all aspire towards.

Frankly, Cape Town represents an unchanged past in our present. It’s as if the city froze in a pre-1994 moment.

Some folks have even resorted to calling the mother-city “the last European outpost in Africa”.

It is probably the least integrated residential space in the country. It’s not uncommon for an African person to be the only one among a white crowd down a street, or attract stares from white people in a restaurant as if they’re questioning why you’re there.

Cape Town’s racial problem is neither new, nor are such observations original. This is a remnant of our past that exists in all parts of the country to varying levels, depending on the specific histories and calibre of the current leadership in the various provinces.

What intrigues one about Cape Town is not so much the past-ness of its present, but what it signifies about our collective potential to create a truly different future.

This city presents the toughest test of how much the political elite is able to re-make itself, build a different popular consciousness, and thus break with the past.

And this is a challenge that Cape Town poses to both the African nationalist movement and the historically white liberal party.

Provincial dynamics demand that both parties move out of their comfort zones to strive towards their aspirations. The rewards are different for each party, but similarly meaningful.

Consider the ANC, for starters. Its problem with Cape Town predates the current electoral difficulties, related partly to what the city has meant in the historical memory of blacks.

The coast of that city is not only the point of colonial intrusion, but also the base of conquest. It is from that part of the country that marauding settlers launched wars of conquest, and subsequently became the centre of incarceration.

Those who took up arms against racial superiority were imprisoned on eSiqithini (Robben Island), just off the city’s coastline.

Most of us are familiar with its recent prisoners. But the notoriety of iSiqithi dates back to the 19th century when it imprisoned equally heroic figures such as Makana KaNxele, Dawid Stuurman, Maqoma and Galeshewe.

Some never returned from Cape Town, such as Makana who drowned in a failed attempt to escape prison, and Stuurman who was sent to another prison in Australia where he died. His remains remain unknown.

Cape Town doesn’t conjure up pleasant memories in the African psyche. It is an emotive problem that has now been exacerbated by what appears to be attempts to maintain the city as a place of racial exclusion. But the ANC soon realised that wallowing in self-righteous indignation would not gain it power in the province.

The party dealt rationally with the dynamics of the province, especially that the party had predominantly been African, which was problematic in a province with a majority coloured population.

That rational approach, however, gave way to an exclusivist nationalist rhetoric and insistence on a predominantly African leadership.

The consequence was the alienation of coloured voters, which the DA exploited by casting the ANC as racist. And the ANC increasingly lost its majority, while the DA surged.

In other words, the ANC’s loss of power in the province has less do with numerical minority of Africans than it did with the failure to embrace an inclusive African nationalism.

It appears to have made amends, as the recent past has seen a return to the more inclusive African nationalism marked by the election of coloured leaders.

This was accompanied somewhat by a focus beyond race to class issues. A focus on class is all-encompassing as it speaks equally to the plight of both the coloured and the African poor.

If the ANC’s Achilles heel has been exclusive nationalism, then the DA’s is racism and economic conservatism. The party grew on the back of a racist platform.

That’s how Tony Leon expanded the party’s support to surpass the ANC in the province. Now its growth beyond the province depends not only on making fake non-racial claims, but actually improving the lives of black people.

Rhetoric alone is insufficient to sway black supporters. White politicians have a credibility problem among blacks because they have a history of speaking with a forked tongue accompanied by a phony smile. To persuade voters that they’ll do better than the ANC outside of the Western Cape hinges on them improving Khayelitsha and KwaLanga.

Africans elsewhere won’t believe DA claims when the lives of their brethren in Cape Town don’t show that the party cares for black life.

There’s no reason why the DA cannot better township conditions the same way the ANC is doing in Jozi. Cape Town has healthy revenue levels and wealthy suburban residents.

This should enable it to pursue a meaningful redistributive project. Increases in property tax and entrance fees for tourists at the various tourist destinations, for example, can make a material difference in the lives of Cape Town’s poor.

Presently, the city’s government appears content with accolades about the beauty of the city, its popularity among tourists and foreigners buying up most of the province. Prominent cities in developing countries have a dual economy: one for the wealthy, the other for its poor citizens, and the former subsidises the latter.

But to pursue a redistributive project the DA will have to face-off against its wealthy traditional supporters.

For a party that has historically been comfortable with inequality, following this path will require some ideological make-over.

This is risky. If it fails to persuade this constituency that a redistribution project has long-term benefits, then it may lose them and its future prospects will vanish.

In its undisturbed reflection of the past, therefore, Cape Town is a perfect test of whether we can remake ourselves. And this we must do in order to break with patterns of the past, to give further meaning to the promise of freedom, to entrench the newness of our time.

But there aren’t any visible signs that the DA is willing to deal with this challenge. The dominant narrative is that the city government is modernising shacks, instead of eliminating them. Research conducted by the Mapungubwe Institute however, showed that inequality is deepening, especially in the scenic coastal towns.

Attempts are afoot to get rid of the old fishing cottages to make way for posh residences inhabited by wealthy foreign-nationals. That’s neo-colonialism!

Cape Town holds the future of the DA. Failure to deal with inequality and poverty will limit its national growth, while reviving the ANC’s electoral fortunes.

And, there were signs of that revival among the province’s rural voters. Cape Town is not an aberration but offers an opportunity to re-imagine ourselves!

Mcebisi Ndletyana heads the political economy faculty of the Mapungubwe Institute for Strategic Reflection