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‘Wokeness’ could threaten our constitutional democracy, says Helen Zille

02 August 2021 | Story Sanet Madonsela | Photo Supplied

iStock-1249723002 copy — Helen Zille unpacking the notion of ‘wokeness’ and its context within the broader South Africa during a virtual book discussion with Prof Hussein Solomon.

The Department of Political Studies and Governance at the University of the Free State hosted Helen Zille, Chairperson of the Federal Council of the Democratic Alliance, to discuss her book #StayWoke: Go Broke: Why South Africa won’t survive America’s culture wars (and what you can do about it). Zille was in discussion with the Academic Head of Department, Prof Hussein Solomon. She unpacked the notion of ‘wokeness’ – also known as the ‘critical theory’, as well as the emergence of a ‘cancel culture’ in broader society.

Zille explained how the woke ideology combines post-modernism and neo-Marxism and why intersectionality often features in the lexicons (vocabulary) of South African universities.

Wokeness and its threat to our Constitution

Zille explained that wokeness threatens South Africa’s constitutional democracy. “Unlike America, South Africa’s democratic institutions are fragile and new and may not be able to survive the wave of wokeness,” she said. She further explained how the ‘properly wokes’ request to have separate graduations for African students could not work and how South Africa’s Constitution promotes inclusion.

Zille believes that the country needs its young people to be critical thinkers, as this can assist in stabilising the country’s economy and internal challenges. She believes that society needs a range of paradigms to make sense of the world, processes, programmes, and history and that it should not be overly reliant on a singular view, as this could have negative implications on the country in the long term. Zille concluded that she remains hopeful for the country, as its citizens are intelligent, sensible, ethical, and rational enough to move it forward and assist in reaching its full potential.

Wokeness aims to overthrow societal hierarchy

Zille notes in her book that 'wokeness is an attempt to invert ‘society’s conventional hierarchy of privilege in order to promote marginalised identities.' This stems from a struggle against inborn attributes of personal identity such as race, sex, sexuality, gender, and disability. It believes that society comprises power hierarchies that determine what should be known and what shouldn’t, as well as how events and actions should be interpreted. It believes that social justice activists need to expose unequal power relations and dismantle them in order to achieve social justice.

Unequal power relations in this regard include racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, fatphobia, and other prejudices. Moreover, it argues that knowledge needs to be decolonised in order to achieve social justice. Decolonisation would require stripping knowledge of the methods and contents used in Western society. While it ‘seeks’ to promote inclusion, wokeness has begun to symbolise an extreme intolerance and is often used as a tool to enable a cancel culture. As a movement, it has been used to tear down statues, deface paintings, and monitor others’ speech infringements to ensure conformity. Rather than engage in rational debates with those who share dissenting views, online woke communities silence people with opposing views. This threatens social progress. Zille’s book represents a valuable contribution and a necessary attempt to understand the phenomenon and why it would not work in the South African context.

Having personally experienced the wave of wokeness and cancel culture, Zille is well placed to advise others experiencing such tactics. She advises them to recognise what happened and to remain calm; to question whether they said or did anything objectionable or whether they just undermined the woke narrative; not to apologise or resign, as it feeds into the narrative that they have done something wrong; to seek legal counsel if they can afford it; not to engage online mobs; and not to give up.

Watch recording of webinar below:

News Archive

Dialogue between Science and Society series looks at forgiveness and reconciliation

2013-03-24

Taking part in the discussion on forgiveness and living reconciliation, were from left: Olga Macingwane, a survivor of the Worcester bombing of 1993; Dr Juliet Rogers, a Scholar on Remorse from the University of Melbourne in Australia and Dr Deon Snyman, Chairperson of the Worcester Hope and Reconciliation Process.
Photo: Mandi Bezuidenhout
24 March 2013

How do you, as a mother who lost her only daughter, forgive the man who claimed responsibility for the attack that killed her? How do you forget his crime while travelling with him across the world?

These were some of the questions posed to Jeanette Fourie at a Dialogue between Science and Society series on forgiveness and living reconciliation. Jeanette, whose daughter Lyndi was killed in an attack on the Heidelberg Pub in Cape Town in 1993, was one of three people telling their stories of forgiveness while dealing with traumatic experiences.

Sitting next to Letlapa Mphahlele, the man who owned up to the attack that killed her daughter, Jeanette spoke about their story of forgiveness traveling the world together, spreading the message of forgiveness and conciliation.

"Don't ever think you can forget, because that’s not possible. What you do with the pain is to find peace, and that's what forgiveness does. Forgiveness allows you to stop all the dialogue in your head on why he did it. You don't forget, you confront it and you deal with it."

Letlapa, Director of Operations of Apla, the military wing of the PAC at the time of Lyndi's death, spoke about dealing with the response to his crime. "Sometimes you wish that you were not forgiven, because now you have the great burden of proving that you are worthy of forgiveness."

Also telling her story of forgiveness was Olga Macingwane, a survivor of the Worcester bombing of 1993 in which four people were killed and sixty-seven others injured. Four people were sent to prison. In 2009 Olga met one of the perpetrators, Stefaans Coetzee, and what came out of that meeting, is her story.

"When I met Stefaans I was very angry, but when you sit down with somebody and listen to him or her, you find out what the reasons were that made him or her do something. I can say that I forgave him."

Facilitating the conversation, Prof Pumla Gobodo-Madikizela, Senior Research Professor on Trauma, Forgiveness and Reconciliation, said the seminar was meant to get in touch with the truth that forgiveness is possible.

"Before we had the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) in South Africa, the experts always said that forgiveness was not possible in these stories of the past. And then the TRC came into life as a response to mass atrocities. For the first time in the history of these traumatic experiences, of political traumas, we witness something that we have never seen. Even us on the TRC, although it was framed as reconciliation, we never imagined there would actually be stories of forgiveness emerging out of that process, and then we witness that this too is possible."

Others who took part in the two-hour-long seminar, were Dr Juliet Rogers, a Scholar on Remorse from the University of Melbourne in Australia and Dr Deon Snyman, Chairperson of the Worcester Hope and Reconciliation Process. They spoke about the dynamics behind the processes of engagement between victims/ survivors and perpetrators.

The Dialogue between Science and Society series was co-hosted by the Institute for Reconciliation and Social Justice.

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