DON MAKATILE | Whites contemptuous of black political leadership

At primary school I was part of a posse of boys from my neck of the woods who made lunch money as caddies at the Krugersdorp Golf Course.

Our generation was neither the first nor the last to eke out a semblance of a living this way. It was a rite of passage; something to do in the course of being streetwise, and self-sustaining.

Then one day, something big happened – BJ (John Balthazar) Vorster, at the time the serving prime minister of apartheid SA, came to play our course. 

It is golf etiquette to fall silent at the tee box when a player is contemplating his drive, as with any other shot. But when Vorster got on the tee, the bellicose manner in which the silence was enforced was a novelty for us caddies. The white men in Vorster’s security detail and their counterparts in the rank membership of the course turned to the caddies to demand stillness, as if we did not already know this rule of the game.

"Bly stil" echoed around the tee-box, louder than the standard birdsong of the links. Now that I play the game myself in my adulthood, I remember that Vorster’s shot was a terrible duff but the applause that followed was as uproarious as what Tiger Woods elicits when he hits a golf ball.

The Vorster visit reminds me of the obsequiousness with which white people, especially the Afrikaner, treat [their] political authority. This is the respect they are wary to extend to politicians of the darker hue, of the post-1994 dispensation.

I’m reminded here of the picture of Balwin Property CEO Stephen Brookes with his arm draped around President Cyril Ramaphosa. Anyone landing from outer space seeing that picture would think Ramaphosa works for him. He oozes arrogance. In another frame, he shakes hands with the president with his right hand; his left resting on Ramaphosa's shoulder. The chutzpah!

No Afrikaner male typifies this contempt for black political leadership than Johann Rupert. There are many examples, his just happens to loom large in my head at present.

In an encounter with  Ramaphosa, who was by then still secretary-general of trade union federation Cosatu, the young Rupert defends his family empire’s decision to establish one company overseas.

The mood at the time was when "the ANC still had strong leftist leanings and nationalisation was in the air".

Responding to Ramaphosa, Rupert says: "Cyril, it’s actually very simple, and you can tell that to your stakeholders. I have to protect the assets of my stakeholders, the shareholders, against your stakeholders – so that if they want to steal them, they won’t be able to do so."

Everybody loved Nelson Mandela, or so we thought.

As an employer, the young Rupert was "strongly opposed to the envisaged lockout clause that would prohibit employers from locking trade union members of the workplace in the event of strikes".

Mandela approaches Johann Rupert to straighten out a few issues related to the worrisome clause.

"Mr Mandela," the younger man counters, "you know I have great respect for you and that I love you like a father. But it’s not you that I have to trust. Because I don’t trust Sam."

He was referring to Sam Shilowa, then secretary-general of Cosatu and a communist.

Rupert’s father’s biographer concludes the encounter thus: "Johann then said that if the lockout clause were to be enforced, he would close down all his factories and mines in South Africa the next day".

"Ultimately, the lockout clause was not included in the final constitution."

 Now the question is, how much power or respect does the black political principal wield against the Afrikaner businessman who holds the purse strings? Nothing, nada, zilch!

• Makatile publishes The Sentinel