Hoss Cartwright wrote:I'd assume they'd despise the idea of a rainbow nation.
Not really. The whole point of Black Nationalism is the empowerment of the black community, in order to achieve sovereignty and self-rule, in order to ensure that blacks can no longer be oppressed.
South Africa achieved black majority rule. Choosing to self-segregate in politically organized communities as Malcolm X proposed is a
strategy to challenge white power
in a country where blacks are an oppressed minority, not the
goal (which is national liberation). In South Africa, national liberation for the Xhosa, Zulu and other black peoples was achieved with the fall of apartheid. National and racial oppression is largely over, what remains are issues of class and
economic exploitation, endemic to capitalism.
Getting rid of the white population through mass deportations or genocide or disfranchising it through reverse apartheid is not really one of the goals of mainstream Black Nationalism. A democratic South Africa
cannot be anything but a rainbow nation. Aside from its black majority, which is not nationally homogeneous (There's Xhosa, Zulu and another big group) it has a >10%, prosperous (and thus influential) Afrikaner minority, a large Indian population (also economically successful), and a massive Colored (mixed-race) demographic, most of it urban and lower-middle-class.
Hoss Cartwright wrote:They'd also be pissed that whites retained property.
That they are, and in that criticism President Mugabe has a very damn good point: South Africa achieved black liberation politically (blacks hold political power) but this liberation didn't materialize economically: Mandela
just plain didn't do Land Reform, so the Boer still own most of the land they stole (pretty much all of it except what's been bought by a relatively small black bourgeoisie), Afrikaner businessowners still have a big grip in industry and structural economic inequalities persist between the afrikaners and the blacks. Mugabe HAS criticized Mandela for it, pointing out that Afrikaners still dominate the economy and the average Afrikaner is STILL way better off than the average Zulu or Xhosa. Economic power is very real, so White Power is only partially defeated if the white bourgeoisie still has strategic control of the economy.
The ANC
should have enacted Land Reform. They
should have nationalized mining. They
should have collectivized a larger portion of the economy. Because until S.A. builds socialism, structural socioeconomic inequalities and power imbalances
can't really be fixed for real.