It is undeniable that Frantz Fanon identifies European, or “white” culture as racist to the core. It is equally undeniable that he affirmed the likelihood of the discourses of knowledge emanating from this culture being equally racist. It stands to reason that a culture, which regards itself as being superior to all others, given its supposedly “glorious” history of conquest of other nations and races through war, colonisation, science and technology, would have left a repository of its racist beliefs and attitudes in the very sciences (particularly human and social) that are its putative instruments of conquest and of the achievement of superiority.
This is not difficult to understand if one considers the provenance of one’s beliefs in the cultural situation where one (anyone) grows up. And if one happens to be from a different culture, but finds oneself in a western cultural situation, your view of your own culture is bound to be fundamentally affected by its standing in the value-judgments of your host culture (in this case western or “white”). As Fanon puts it, alluding to the kind of cultural osmosis that takes place in a predominantly western context, from which a black person, initially from an African cultural setting, is not exempt (Black Skin, White Masks, p.118)
“In other words, there is a constellation of postulates, a series of propositions that slowly and subtly — with the help of books, newspapers, schools and their texts, advertisements, films, radio — work their way into one’s mind and shape one’s view of the world of the group to which one belongs.”
Summing up Fanon’s insights in the Foreword to the 2008 Pluto Press edition of Black Skin, White Masks, Ziauddin Sardar says (p. XV-XVI):
One wonders why the ANC and even Black society at large will embark on an outcry to get the DA to recall Helen Zille as Premier of Western Cape and to suspend her.
Why do we fucken care whether they suspend or recall her?
Here is what we must be thinking about;
How does power get Black people to stop trusting the DA and to have confidence in it?
Helen Zille represents what the DA stands for. All of the white people in the DA think the same way as Helen does.
So isolating Helen Zille from the DA doesn’t serve justice. This call for her to be removed and suspended by blacks is notorious and abused.
How do you expect evil to remove it’s bad aura when it is what makes it evil?
Racism is the core foundation and strength of the DA. The whites, who in their numbers support and vote for the DA, are attracted to that party because of whst it stands for – racism and white corruption.
The DA as a whole is racist and corrupt – no matter what that black stooge called Mmusi Maimane says it is. Maimane is just employing public relations so to calm down the outcry about Helen’s racist utterances.
The DA is evil and believes in colonial principles and values to suppress and segregate black people as well as to isolate us from our families and identity.
The black layer in the DA serves to just mislead people into thinking that the DA is beyond racial propensities and boundaries but the truth is, they are just glorified “kaffirs” and “monkeys” who keep dancing and entertaining the master.
There is nothing they can say or do against the DA federal committee which in turn takes decisions and runs the DA leaving Maimane to fumble like a scrambled egg.
Our people must see through Helen Zille that the DA will never deliver total liberation to our people. It will continue to protect white privileges and defend land theft. They will continue to mislead blacks into thinking that DA is what we need.
So let us not isolate the racist Helen Zille from the DA. Let’s instead see Zille and the DA as one force standing against the return of our land; and one force which will stop at nothing until they see the recolonisation of our country. And this is a force supported unfortunately by political parties like the EFF.
Our call is based on the idea of Black Unity and Black Power – the power to return our land and economy; the power to restore black dignity and pride.
Lufuno Gogoro is the Johannesburg Regional Convenor of Black First Land First