TESSA DOOMS | Privilege, just like poverty, is a sensitive topic in SA

SA has a long history of intentional and painful inequality, yet the consequent privilege that has and continues to accrue from the realities of living in one of the most unequal countries in the world is a conversation few are willing to have. It has become much easier to talk about poverty than privilege, but if SA is to truly make meaningful progress toward a future we all deserve we must be willing to confront the question of privilege.

We must reckon with its historical and present-day causes. We must contend with the ways that it shows up in the daily experiences of people across race, class and gender divides. We must determine what particularly people who experience privilege are willing to give in order to shift the fortunes of our country. 

Privilege in SA is not limited to the attainment of lavish lifestyles. It is not even limited to access to resources. Privilege is relative. It is not all accessed or experienced in the same ways, but when it shows up in our lives, it is important that we are able to recognise it.

In a country with low levels of service delivery to a majority of people, high levels of poverty, high levels of unemployment and even higher levels of social injustice, privilege is not a zero-sum experience.

Sometimes privilege shows up as being white in a country that has historically and culturally been designed with you in mind. Sometimes it means being a man in a world where being a woman means constant fear of violence. Sometimes it means being old in a society that infantilises its youth. Sometimes its as simple as opening a tap in your home in a country where 57% of people do not have a tap in their homes, more than 28 years after democracy. 

When we take for granted having access to basic human rights like water, sanitation, electricity, dignity and freedom when the majority of people have had to routinely live without these rights, we wittingly or unwittingly are among the privileged in our society.

If we choose not to disrupt our own privileges, they will likely be disrupted through the failure of social norms or the failure of the functions of the state. Waiting to see how bad it may get for others before deciding that the fight for a better future for all is a worthy one, may mean we have much less to preserve in future. SA is fast approaching a situation where piecemeal solidarity through isolated acts of charitable kindness will simply not move the needle.

On Saturday, people who are LGBTQIA+ gathered in different places and spaces to express and celebrate Pride. In a country and continent where homophobia remains rife, and structural violence is still a norm for anyone who does not present as heterosexual, events like Pride remain a site of struggle to be accepted, safe and free to love who they love. Pride is as much a celebration and it is a call for a just, fair and equal SA and world.

The struggle for a safe, just, fair and equitable SA for all cannot be left to the people who are most marginalised alone. Members of the LGBTQIA+ community need not take to the streets alone. There struggle is not in isolation. Thus, all who seek to contribute to a future SA that is better can and should be willing to show up in solidarity with marginalised groups in society on days and in ways that matter. Solidarity is an action. It calls for more than an inclusive society that makes space for people to be a part of the status quo. Solidarity calls for a collective effort to disrupt the status quo, to remake a better society and to stand with and for the rights of all even when we do not have to.

Given the depths of our crisis and the extent of injustice, SA needs a radical solidarity if we are to break the back of inequality. More importantly, it is those of us with access to any privilege to recognise it. This is not a call to feel shame for privilege. It is a call for us to disrupt our own privilege, regardless of how we accessed it, for the collective good.

Reflecting the words of Martin Luther King Jr, it is up to the privileged of society to stand up and say that injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.

SA is a group project. If one person, group or sector of society is under threat, it compromises the whole. While particularly economic and political privilege offers some the option to retreat or even escape to a different country, or the option to attempt to insulate ourselves and our families from the crisis, retreat or escape will only prolong our collective discomfort. Ultimately our fates, as members of Project SA are tied.

May we learn from erstwhile leaders like Samora Machel who famously said about solidarity that it “… is not an act of charity: it is an act of unity between allies fighting on different terrains toward the same objective. The foremost of this objective is to aid the development of humanity to the highest level possible.”