As criminal as it’s considered in SA, looking back is one of the most important things we can do as this year draws to a close.
When I look back on this year, which has been a disaster for many, I wonder how many times can we make the same mistakes. Or rather, as nothing is ever by mistake; how many times will we re-enact the same harm? The moment at which our government, already so embattled in the court of public opinion, could really have proven its proposed commitment to bettering the lives of citizens, chose to double down on dereliction of duty.
At first, when the president graced our screens almost weekly, detailing how his government will guide us through this pandemic, even the most hardened sceptics felt a pang of hope. I am one such sceptic. It was the final disaster we suspected would jolt our government into self-reflection and ultimately self-correction. The now or never moment. To everyone’s surprise they chose never. We should probably have known better than to think that anything but removal from office would inspire even a temporary repositioning of a damaged, corroded moral compass.
What to do with this realisation has plagued me for months. What seems worthy of my emotional and intellectual investment, if not succumbing to pessimism, which I have done? I was comfortable with this too, until I rediscovered a clip of James Baldwin sharing insights on pessimism.
He said: “I can't be a pessimist because I am alive. To be a pessimist means that you have agreed that human life is an academic matter. So, I am forced to be an optimist. I am forced to believe that we can survive, whatever we must survive.”
I, too, am guilty of agreeing that human life is an academic matter, to the detriment of my own humanity. The relentless onslaught of violations carried out by power certainly can deflate one, but Baldwin is right. Personally, it is worth remembering that despite being disenfranchised on multiple axes of power, I have managed to dodge some of the blows. Unlike a vast majority, there are still things I can do for myself and others. Striving for equality does not have a linear, exponential trajectory. We make gains, remain stagnant, reverse some gains and make them again.
It is not my interest to romanticise struggle and I am firmly of the belief that by now we should have achieved true equality for all. In fact, we must be extremely angry at the society we have. In the fire of that anger lies the potential for a hope. We must also look to the resources for survival left behind by ancestors across the globe, in the stories they told about people who survived in spite of their own hopelessness. The power structures we face now are not new and past resistance to injustice, although not wholly successful, has achieved victories worth claiming.
Considering a way forward from disaster, those who want to recommit to trying for a better future should consult with what has been achieved. If we want a new government, numerous movements show us how that could look. We might have thought we would never have to revisit our past in that way, but that is down to an illusion that we have created a present completely unlike that past.
Through countless stories of black, queer, survival which have subverted power structures, we have reference for what is possible. Against my own past assertions that optimism proves futile, there are still possibilities to imagine. Though there will always only be a small group of people striving for true justice, it is worth trying. A collective imagination that creates possibilities for a truly equal future forms a foundation on which we can build, inspired by the archives of our generational inheritance – radical commitment to survival and hope.
• Khan is an author and a PhD candidate in critical diversity studies.
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