Recent remarks attributed to Sir Ketumile Masire in regard to racists at BMC have interested me. What one needs to know is whether racism in Botswana is incidental, in the sense that one can see it once in a while in isolated instances, or whether it is institutionalized in the sense that one can say it is part and parcel of our country.
A colleague once told me that whilst he was a student in the United Kingdom they had a visit from Rre Masire who expressed a certain mistrust of white people. The problem was that Rre Masire’s statement was at odds with his outward relationship with white people. In the eighteen years that Rre Masire was president of this country he has never to my knowledge acknowledged the existence of racism in Botswana. A look at the procurement program during his tenure will show that more wealth was placed in white and foreign hands than in black hands.
Sir Seretse Khama also in my view had a jaundiced view to racism. It seems to me that he thought that if black people can drink in the same bars as white people then there was no racism. Even though he had experienced racism in regard to his marriage to a white woman as soon as he became president and got recognition he forgot about the question of racism. Overall then we have had leaders at the early stages of our country who have personalized the issue of racism. As long as they were given some level of acceptance by white people they could not see racism.
Sir Seretse made an interest remark about our people being able to teach white people about how to live peacefully with people different from you. I have the view that much as his remarks reflected positively on black Batswana’s tolerance, he did not ask anything of white people. In the end it seems to me that he expected Batswana to pay the price for living peacefully with white people. To my knowledge white people, who are primarily settlers, have never positively contributed to the elimination of racism.
It is only the black leadership which has successfully socialized the black majority to pretend the racism was not an issue in Botswana.
Even our people have been trained to offer best service to white people. They have not been trained to offer service to a customer irrespective of colour. There is even a ranking. Today our people are more comfortable expressing negative sentiments about the Chinese but cannot bring up the courage to express the same about white people. This suggests that racism is institutionalized in Botswana. Unlike apartheid South Africa we have racism practiced in nuances. Because the leadership is largely black we think there is no racism.
Racism is about economic power. When people of a certain skin colour dominate the economy of a country, and one cannot identify any primarily special attribute that gave rise to this dominance one must look to the issue of race to understand how the domination came about. I believe if we were to look at the distribution of economic power in Botswana we will be struck by how much economic power is distributed along racial lines with the whites at the top followed by Indians.
Rre Masire also made the observation that unlike the Boers the white man at the centre of the BMC issue did not tell it to your face that you were a kaffir. This suggests that Rre Masire somehow thinks there is a difference in racism arising out of whether someone calls you a kaffir to your face or not. Unfortunately it is this distinction that is at the heart of successive leaders in Botswana failing to see the rampant racism that is in Botswana. I am not aware that there is any obligation on a racist to call you demeaning names to show you what they are. If the issue is about economic power why bother to call anyone a kaffir to their face?
I have personally attended meetings with black professionals who before a white man enters the room, sound confident and knowledgeable of their subject. As soon as the white man enters the room they become timid and seem unsure about their subject. Even within the legal fraternity I have heard some lawyers suggest that our judges listen more to white advocates than black lawyers. That explains why some law firms engage white advocates. They know that some judges have only to look at the colour of the skin and they become accommodating.
This makes one wonder whether the decisions on the trade union cases had to be written and delivered by a white judge in order to appeal to the black citizenry’s inferiority complex. Is it possible that the black judges would have attracted more pronounced disrespect than a white judge? Is it possible that the judiciary was taken by surprise by the level of open criticism having counted on the inferiority complex of the blacks that in a knee jerk reaction it issues the statement of “bordering on contempt”?
I have heard of cases where people making business proposals for financing by banks, have to rope in white agents to do the presentation because if the face making the presentation is black then chances are the proposal will be rejected outright. If indeed this is true then racism is not incidental but is institutionalized in Botswana. We may collectively pretend that it does not exist but privately we know that it does. Unlike South Africa we have not had to institutionalize the fight against racism, how then can we possibly say it does not exist? For some strange reason we have just wished racism away. We are no different from those who do not take steps to resolve problems but simply wish them away.
We have always been taught that unlike South Africa we did not have apartheid. We tended to forget that apartheid was a particular form of racism. It was never intended to be definitive of what racism is. We have therefore fooled ourselves into believing that because our particular form of racism was not apartheid then there was no racism in Botswana. The desire for approval on the part of our leaders has led them to avoid the question of racism like a plague. Our leaders have been in denial for so long that it has taken Rre Masire nearly fifty years to see racism in Botswana.
The trouble with our form of government is that the leaders speak for the people. With this knowledge racists know that all they have to do is pacify the leader and he will express the view on behalf of the majority that indeed there is no racism in Botswana. One cannot however feel sorry for Rre Masire. He played along forgetting that he was disposable. As soon as he stopped being president he was no longer to be pacified for there was a new leader to be worked on. He had no government power and could therefore be subjected to the racism that he allowed to be meted on others.
Some in the so called minority tribes, a label that I believe they have chosen for themselves have all the courage to stand against the so called majority tribes. I have never heard them address the question of racism. One has only to look at the inferiority complex involved here. They have the courage to challenge other blacks but none to challenge whites and Indians. It seems to me that if you are going to assert a level of equality you must do so through the whole spectrum of issues. We must hear the minorities assert their rights even within the racism issue. If they do not they become an asset to racists who will play them against fellow blacks.
As a people we need to seriously look at the question of racism. We cannot condemn our young for adopting American culture, and at the same time present a face that shows us to have accepted an inferior status to white people. We come out as hypocrites. They then have every right not to listen to us. Who wants to follow on the footsteps of someone who has accepted that they are an inferior people?
