So i’m sitting a this coffee shop called Post in Joburg watching these two okes go at it.

In the left corner, EFF member Napoleon Webster, who is notorious for having heckled Jacob Zuma at a meeting, for having heckled Cyril Ramaphosa at a meeting, for having heckled… well, you get the picture. He describes himself at one point in the 24 hours we got to hang together as a “rabble rouser” and i’m pretty sure he is digging the description. Napoleon is wearing a t-shirt that he made with references to Marikana, 34 and Mambush [aka Mgcineni Noci or ‘The man in the green blanket’]. This is the very first time that i have met or even hard of him.

In the right corner, my friend of many years, but only recent reconnection, Moses Sigasa, Gauteng director of Alpha SA, busy involved in work [and studies] on diversity and bringing leaders together to engage in race and justice issues. Dreads that put mine completely to shame. It is only recently that we’ve reconnected a few times whenever I’ve been in Joburg and am really enjoying engaging with him on these issues as we try to figure out what a beautiful new country could look like.

And they are going at it – not heated, not aggressive, both passionate and giving different sides and angles but also different views on the particular topic at hand. i can’t even remember what it was now because it was more the process that fascinated me. And also because i am not used to sitting and listening in conversation – i am completely trying to learn to do that more because it doesn’t come naturally to me and because of the merits of listening to other people speak about things they know more deeply than i do. And i just completely enjoyed it.

Both men left the conversation not quite sure if the other person would ever speak to them again – “Ooh, no I think I offended him.” And i couldn’t see that at all, cos to me it just seemed to real and powerful and great. It wasn’t about winning an argument or having to have the other person agree with you. It was two guys passionate about what they believed and refusing to back down.

A STEP TOWARDS

While i was watching and a bit later when i reflected on their conversation, i thought to myself, “This is the solution for South Africa.” If we could just line up the whole of white South Africa and have them watch and listen to a conversation with Napoleon and Moses, everything would be okay.

Let’s be honest for a second: that probably wouldn’t solve all our problems. i think they would need to observe the conversation through my eyes for it to have that kind of desired effect, and let me see if i can explain.

Often when someone has been accused of racism, they have pointed out to the fact that they have a black friend, as proof that they are not. i was listening to a clip earlier today when a guy was talking about the need for people to have real friends of different colours and backgrounds but he went on  about what that friendship looked like:

Would you leave your kids with that friend? Would you have that friend over at your house when you are not there? Would you be okay with that person being alone with your wife or your husband? That is the kind of mates I am talking about. Real friendships where you are in each others lives. [paraphrase by me]

i honestly believe, with everything in me, that when South Africans start to find and build into real friendships with people from other race groups, then racism will be on the decline. i know of some churches that see themselves as really diverse because on any given Sunday you can look out and see black and white and coloured and indian, but then after the services everyone goes back to “their own”. There is no mixing, no breaking bread in each others homes, no socialising together and so there is the look of something diverse one day a week, but for the rest of the time it might as well be descriptions of “those people” cos you don’t really know them.

THE NEW NORMAL

i watched Moses and Napoleon engaging with each other as equals – equals to each other, but more importantly as equals to me – and that is not and should not be a praiseworthy thing at all, it should be normal. i wasn’t sitting there in that coffee shop thinking “Wow, this is a good debate for black people” which i think is the consequential mindset of having been brought up in this country at the time that i was [born 1974].

If there is a confession i need to make [and i’m sure there are plenty, but this is the most obvious one to me] it’s that i grew up largely believing that i was better than black people. It makes complete sense in that that is what i was constantly fed [fortunately not by my family or church but by the media, school and society i grew up in in both subtle and more extreme ways] even by never ever particularly realising what the colour of my dentist or doctor was compared to the colour of the men who picked up the trash or collected the garbage or built the houses [while the white men stood watching with a hard hat and clipboard].

i was fed it and while i don’t think it was ever anything i overtly believed, i think there was enough evidence of it being in me, in the way i thought or perhaps more in the way i thought of myself when looking at a black person.

It was one of the things that struck me when i was watching Napoleon and Moses argue: i don’t think i’m better than these guys [again, not praiseworthy – normal!] And so perhaps something has shifted. Although when i pull up at a traffic light and a black guy is begging for money, i think i’m better than him. Although, to be fair, these days there seem to be a lot of white guys begging at traffic lights as well, and i think i’m better than them in that moment of interaction. So maybe that has now for me become a class or a money thing.

i’m not sure i’m explaining this well. It felt so much more eloquent and powerful in my head a few days ago. i think i need more Moseses and Napoleon’s in my life though. i mean, i know i do. And am grateful for a bunch that i do have online at least and a couple in real life in Cape Town.

i cannot see myself going from that coffee conversation with Moses and Napoleon in to some other context and uttering the words “Those people…” to describe black people in a different context. i cannot see myself having watched and listened and learned so much in that short space of time, finding myself in an altercation with a black man on the road somewhere and screaming at him the kind of things we’ve seen people scream in recent days. i can’t see myself emerging from that time and being okay to sit in a church like Rivers where a guy like Andre Olivier can make statements that offended a lot of his black congregation and not respond by taking him on, challenging him, making sure of what went down but refusing to let it stand as okay.

The moment i start to view “the other” – whatever that might be – race, gender, language, culture, religion – as someone created in the image of God, with worth and beauty and meaning, then being prejudiced against them becomes so much harder. Still possible, and i believe i am a work in progress on this one [hopefully progress!?] but harder. While i am still “othering” [which terms like “those people” are a clear indicator of, or if i talk of black people as “the blacks” etc] then it is much more simple for me to be dismissive, rude, unpleasant, patronising and worse.

i need to go cook some food, but hopefully enough of the point i was trying to make got across.

Are you developing friendships across lines of “otherness”? Because if you are not, then don’t fool yourself for a second that you believe in the Rainbow Nation [which i not a thing by the way but i hope so deeply it one day will be!] or that you are about change or reconciliation. The best way to step towards in every way to all people is to first step towards an individual or a family and embrace them and learn to see them as the kind of people you can leave your children with, you will have in your home when you are not there and who you will sit in a coffee shop with and go at it passionately.

Thank you Napoleon and Moses, for getting me one step closer, and helping me realise some important things and privileging me by spending your time with me. i look forward to the next, but in the meantime, go have that second coffee cos i don’t think you did…