Listening to the silent majority

[84]

Psychologist Nimrod Mkele also touched upon the subject of the white man having colonised Africa. In his interview with the magazine Black

[p. 108]

Enterprise^63., he even traced poverty in Africa primarily to blacks coming into contact with the West. ‘Before the whites came, we had land and cultivated it. We had cattle. We grew food, and we constantly moved onwards, because all the land was ours. Then, the white colonialists arrived and took our land. They even considered it essential, and said so openly, to reduce our access to the land. We would that way be forced to work for them. On top of all that, they taxed us. Black people, who initially did very well, were reduced to dismal poverty. Whites aimed at cheap labour, especially after 1913. Blacks in this part of the world became very poor indeed. And, when the National Party came to power, they followed that policy even more vigorously. And then, as a rabbit out of the hat, they offered us homelands for blacks exclusively.’

I asked whether blacks had felt as if they were actually being returned their own soil. ‘Precisely,’ replied Mkele, ‘we were getting back the land that had been taken from us. These lands are now being called Transkei, Ciskei, Qua Qua, KaNgwane, Bophuthatswana and all the rest. We possessed those lands before the whites came. Now things are changing. Blacks are steadily regaining lost ground. You see blacks moving now, for instance, into the area of small businesses even. But, then you can't say, that blacks are already moving into the mainstream of South African economy. This remains a difficulty, because we have no access to skills. Essential skills are needed, and they are the tools that South African blacks are waiting for.’

Nimrod Mkele concluded our talk as follows, ‘In the meantime, we are trying to make progress. We now can identify a variety of novel business opportunities for blacks. Then, blacks actively explore new sources to raise funds. We now concentrate on the training and development of blacks, and especially on preparing them to run bigger, more complicated, business operations. In fact, when American companies began disinvesting over the past years, we spoke of revolving-door disinvestment. American withdrawals from our economy too often meant in practice seeing them return here as white South Africans. But, why did the Americans not conclude their deals with us? Blacks could have bought them out too, if we had been given proper financial assistance. That, at least, would have meant a rapid way for blacks to enter the mainstream of the economy. And, surely we do need to get in there.’

63. Black Enterprise, volume 19, 1989