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Earlier this month, respected South African anti-apartheid activist, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, appears to have proposed a tax on white South Africans with the aim of claiming reparations for the apartheid era.

I have to say that this news struck me like a slap in the face, having been an admirer of “The Bish” for decades. On the surface of it, there is so much that is wrong and unfair about this suggestion that it seems completely incongruous with Tutu’s existing record of moderation and forgiveness. On that basis alone, it is well worth re-examining his statements carefully.

The first thing one notices is that he didn’t explicitly call for a tax on white people. He called for a wealth tax, and then directly addressed the white South Africans in the room. Everybody seems to have interpreted this as a suggestion of a tax on being white and, to some degree, Tutu seems to have run with this interpretation.

It seems to me that Tutu has noticed what I have noticed, and what any South African with the ability to observe their environment will notice. White people, on average, are many times more wealthy than black people. Despite my initial very negative reaction, I have to concede that I agree with him. In fact, the Archbishop seems to have found a very clever way to mount a political podium that is very dear to me and from which, at times, I myself presume to speak.

However, as this debate charges through the national consciousness, one important line needs to be drawn and defended. While a wealth tax is acceptable, a whiteness tax is not. A tax that is based on the colour of one’s skin must not be tolerated. There are practical and philosophical reasons for this.

South Africa has already implemented a Black Economic Empowerment policy that exists specifically to redress the wrongs of apartheid. White job seekers find themselves excluded from consideration for certain jobs as a matter of course and white-owned companies are automatically excluded from many lucrative tender projects. With this already in place, the suggestion of a whiteness tax does raise the question of how many times white South Africans will be asked to make reparations for the wrongs of the past.

The South African democracy is now about seventeen years old. People born on the day of the first democratic elections are now approaching adulthood and many of them will already have started their first jobs and registered to be taxed. South Africans up to about 40 years of age would never have voted in a non-democratic election and many of the white South Africans of this age contributed meaningfully to the closing days of the struggle. Massive numbers of whites that supported apartheid have emigrated to other countries and many immigrants of European descent have made their homes in our country in the intervening years. The colour of one’s skin bears no relation to whether or not an individual has benefited from apartheid.

Oh Desmond! You are such a comfort.

Here is an interesting case in point: A certain Archbishop Desmond Tutu was appointed Bishop of Johannesburg in 1985 and elevated to the Archbishopric of Cape Town the following year, remaining in this post until 1996. During his tenure in Cape Town, he dwelt quietly in an ex officio residence in the wealthy white suburb of Bishop’s Court. Having already established credentials as a leading anti-apartheid activist, he contributed significantly and selflessly to the revolution from this comfortable environment, quite unlike Nelson Mandela, who was languishing in a nearby prison. With his ecclesiastical credentials affording him the luxury of contact with the press and international travel, he rapidly acquired an international reputation that has earned him a Nobel Peace Prize and a recent mention on Top Gear. To date, he has authored or co-authored 33 books and, even in retirement, remains a household name throughout the world.

It is, quite honestly, difficult to name any other South African who has benefitted as much from apartheid, when taking into account the difference between his adult lifestyle and his exceedingly humble birth. Admittedly, The Bish made his own luck by working tirelessly, being exceptionally brave in the face of oppression and being a canny politician who, in the midst of the struggle, had the insight and ability to build a bridge between the people he was defending and the youthful generation of the oppressors. All of this would have been pointless, and most of it impossible, without the vehicle of apartheid.

In my mind there is no doubt that Desmond Tutu knows this. He also knows that South African taxation works on a sliding scale in which the the wealthy, including the disproportionally wealthy whites, already pay a larger proportion of their income to the government.

What Tutu is actually suggesting is hidden in the fine print. He wants an additional contribution paid by wealthy South Africans to be administered as a separate fund that is explicitly earmarked for the upliftment of poor South Africans so that it cannot be spent on silly submarines and tender kickbacks. Can a sane South African oppose this suggestion? Well, they can, but only on the grounds of objecting to paying more tax. Is our tax likely to increase in the next few years anyway? Most definitely. Tutu’s suggestion would simply ensure that the additional tax revenue was more likely to be spent where it is needed.

The Bish has forged his career with cleverly contentious statements that force us to re-examine the status quo. In so doing he has become the lovable grandfather of all South Africans excepting, perhaps, the irredeemably right-wing ones. No matter how shocking his initial tax suggestions seemed, they are no different from the suggestions that he has always made. His recent clarification that calls for wealthy South Africans to establish a voluntary fund to support poor South Africans makes even more sense than the levying of a tax. “Tax” is always a four-letter word. A voluntary contribution to nation building is something that I would definitely consider.

South Africa has recently seen a tide of negative sentiment about Shell extracting natural gas from the Karoo. People are justifiably very concerned about the environmental impact of this extraction. Personally, I love the Karoo and would hate to see it ruined by Big Oil but, as is usually the case when the Green Hysteria takes hold, all is not what it seems.

First, lets take some time to understand what “fracking” is. As it turns out, it is a term that has been mangled by the environmental lobby. Within the oil industry, “fracing,” without the emotive extra k, is a contraction of “hydraulic fracturing“. It seems that when you drill a deep hole to extract natural gas, you eventually hit a small pocket of gas that is separated from other small pockets by sheets of rock. From this small pocket, the gas dribbles out of the well in a manner that is not really impressive or economically useful. What you do to solve this problem is pump a vast amount of water into the well at very high pressure. This causes the rock sheets to crack, or fracture. Sand or ceramic particles are often pumped down with the water as these help to keep the resulting cracks open. Sometimes, small amounts of chemicals are added to allow the water to penetrate certain kinds of soil or rock more readily. Once this has been done, the gas squirts out of the well in a most satisfactory and profitable manner.

Some years back, a chap named Josh Fox made a documentary movie called Gasland, in which he documented the environmental degradation of areas of the United States due to natural gas extraction. He blamed “fracking” for all of the trouble. Now everybody hates fracing.

The problem with this is that fracing turns out to be harmless.

Yeah. Fracing turns out to be harmless. The problem is not the fracing, but the act of drilling for natural gas in the first place. This involves serious environmental risks if wells are not constructed properly. Considerable pollution is also produced when the natural gas is extracted and purified on the surface. These downsides have almost nothing to do with fracing itself.

Why do you think that the environmentalists have lied to us again? Well, most of environmentalism seems to be based on marketing. Telling people that drilling for gas is bad is nowhere nearly as effective as telling them that fracking is bad. Most people have seen boreholes being drilled without the sky falling, so they are unlikely to experience any real alarm about gas wells. Fracking, however, is something most people didn’t know anything about until 2010. It is new, mysterious and in the hands of The Corporations! It is easy to make something like that seem like a really bad idea. Also, “frak” is used as an expletive in the excellent Battlestar Galactica series, which makes it possible to construct such pithy slogans as, “What the frack?”, “No fracking way” and “Don’t frack with our future!”

Starbuck and Starbuck at Starbucks: this isn't their fracking problem!

Now, when actual scientific studies prove that fracing is harmless, environmentalists become outraged. They assert that the oil industry is guilty of linguistic trickery by using “fracing” to refer to the process of pumping high pressure water into gas wells. They proclaim that “fracking” means the entire process of drilling for gas. It doesn’t. It is a specific term with a fixed meaning that has been turned into a marketing vehicle for environmentalism. When caught in their lie, they redefine it to cover everything that they oppose.

I find that really sad. The danger here is that the oil companies will actually give in and say, “Oh, OK. We won’t frack.” Then they will go ahead and unleash the full ambit of environmental damage on the Karoo without accountability or any way of stopping them. If this happens, it will be the fault of the environmentalists who chose to defend their marketing slogan rather than our actual environment.

Compare the Greenpeace article about fracing to the others I have posted here. It is emotive, seemingly inaccurate and contains no references to actual evidence that fracing is bad. Greenpeace makes its money by publishing documents like that, and that money funds a life of adventure for the Greenpeace activists that has very little, if any, direct contribution to saving our environment. Truly, we are in the grip of Big Enviro.

Saving the Karoo is really important to me. So is the economic survival of South Africa. I really hope that, if it is economically viable to extract natural gas from the Karoo, it is done in a way that is environmentally unassailable and that the area is left in pristine condition.

If you want to ensure this, you need to educate yourself properly about the risks, the rewards and the actual process that will be used. This isn’t something you are going to get from Greenpeace or by going on marches.

Two days ago, a gentleman in Norway blew up a government building and then shot a large number of people at a youth camp that was hosting an event organised by the ruling political party. The final death toll was in the region of 90. I am sure that I speak for everyone who reads this when I say that our thoughts and sympathies are with the Norwegian people in these dark and tragic days.

In the initial news reports, journalistic speculation naturally lead to discussions of Islamic fundamentalism. After all, we have been conditioned for a decade to believe that when something is blowing up, shadowy Arab people cannot be far away. Within hours, however, Norwegian police notified the world that the suspect taken into custody, one Anders Behring Breivik, was a Christian fundamentalist.

Collectively, right-wing political pundits all over the Western world had the same thought: Awkward!

To me, this poses an interesting question. Is this person’s faith relevant to his outrageous deed? Harris and Klebold were avid computer gamers. The media made a meal of this at the time but it turned out to be irrelevant to those attacks. Should we regard the Norwegian tragedy as another evil deed facilitated by religion?

Without hearing from the suspect himself, it is impossible to be sure. However, in general terms, I believe the answer is both “yes” and “no”.

If I were asked whether his Christian fundamentalism caused the massacre, I would have to go with “No.” It is grossly unfair to the overwhelming majority of peaceful Christians out there to declare their faith responsible for this evil deed. Unfortunately, the politically convenient precedent of blaming Islam for the acts of a violent minority of Islamists has already been set, so I suspect that some Christian groups will experience unpleasant consequences as a result of these events. In reality, however, millions of people all over the world believe in Jesus without going on insane, murderous rampages. Even if Breivik himself tells the court that the voice of John the Baptist in his head told him to do it, I would still not blame his Christianity. Even for an atheist, it is too easy – too convenient – to blame religion without knowing all of the facts.

I believe that Breivik is just crazy. He killed all these people because he is crazy, and my opinion is that he was a Christian fundamentalist because he is crazy. There is a part of his faith that lead directly to his deeds but that has nothing to do with Christians. It is his Religionist Fundamentalism that is to blame.

Surprising and illogical things

Religions, in general, require people to believe surprising and illogical things. I think that the vast majority of religious people choose to believe a watered down version of their faith in which they ignore some of the logical problems and fill the resultant gaps in with their own theology, more appropriate to their daily lives. Then you get the Litteralists, a small minority that interprets the tennets of their faith literally while being fully aware of the fact that they seem illogical. These people often spend a lot of time in study groups, grappling to reconcile their faith with their daily lives. Finally, you get a small group within the Litteralists who are the dangerous True Believers. These people respond to the contradiction between faith and daily life by turning off their logical filters and believing wholeheartedly in whatever their scriptures and their religious leaders tell them.

Therein lies the problem. Once you have crossed the line of turning off your logic and personal accountability for your beliefs and actions, it is a simple matter to do it again. Put another way, “Once you go whack, you can’t go back.” Antisocial viewpoints relating to religion, politics or, as seems to be the case with Breivik, a mixture of the two can express themselves with no behavioural filter because you have disengaged your sense of responsibility for your own actions and vested it in a Higher Power, or a Greater Good.

Just like in the far less tragic example of noted Religionist, Stephen Jay Gould and his Heads, it is easy, if not inevitable, to express your personal convictions in an irrational and subconscious way when, in fact, you should be expressing something else.

Then you get what we had last week.

I am always disappointed by the reaction of my peers when I express my genuine political views. Unlike most white South Africans, I do not support the Democratic Alliance. Other white South Africans react to this news with shock and, on the occasions when I am not faced with angry outrage, any political discussions are abruptly terminated. We South Africans do discuss politics at the dinner table these days, but only when everyone present is in agreement.

By contrast, most black voters I know are inclined to the African National Congress camp. This implies a racial polarisation in South African politics that is confirmed by the numbers. Compare our most recent census data with the results of our most recent election.

The conclusion is inescapable. White people are very likely vote for the DA, which has a white leader and fields a large proportion of white candidates. Black people are very likely to vote for the ANC, which has a black leader and fields a very large proportion of black candidates.

It is only in the other racial groups, making up 12.4% of our population, that the ANC and the DA really have anything to play for. The only exception is Northern KwaZulu-Natal, where the amaZulu tend to vote for the IFP and the amaXhosa tend to vote for the ANC.

I believe that the only explanation for this is that we are still racists. If true, this is disturbing and infuriating. It implies that, seventeen years after Freedom, we still have no real political discourse in our country and that our political landscape, rather than being shaped by the issues of the day, is shaped by an accident of genetics as arbitrary as the distinction between two sports teams.

Still racists

This, too, is born out by daily experience. We don’t actually have any meaningful political discourse but rather alternating rounds of increasingly hysterical recriminations about matters that don’t really have much to do with the running of the country.

In South Africa, different population groups get completely different views of our political reality. Township dwellings are being upgraded in their tens of thousands from shacks to government-built RDP houses. One hundred and twenty-one billion Rand has been allocated to this in the 2011 budget. White people don’t see this because houses are already nice in white areas. One hundred and eighty-nine billion Rand has been allocated to education in the 2011 budget. White people don’t see this because the schools in white areas are already good.

Yes, there are problems in South Africa and some things are not going as well as they should be. Some political dissonance is inevitable in a democratic society and it should be welcomed. When this political dissonance happens along rigidly defined racial lines, however, something is badly wrong. It means that we are not mixing. We are not sharing experiences. We are simply not reading each others’ news.

Last night I attended a comedy show in which the performer observed that “The Rainbow Nation” is a perfect name for South Africa. Just like in a rainbow, our colours are rigidly compartmentalised and easily distinguished from one another at a great distance.