Time to lose the ego and spin

South Africans have developed a warped sense of ourselves; we need to start appreciating the land we live in

The best result of World Cup 2010 would be the recasting of South Africa from global racism headquarters to an ordinary developing country challenged by the problems of poverty. It's about time we got ourselves into some sort of accurate perspective.
Being alternately demonized and lionized for over half a century takes its toll on common sense. You begin to believe you're extraordinary; destined like a soap opera to eclipse one episode after another.  Victors and villains of epic status in a single nation; history at its most reckless. Far from a regular bloke leading us out of the apartheid wilderness, for example, it was humankind's secular saint, Nelson Mandela, who saved us from ourselves.
Now, although celebrating soccer rather than peaceful co-existence, the World Cup presents another opportunity for South Africans to spin their narrative heroically. Inevitably perhaps, the doubts of yesterday persist. Is the past really another country, demands the global media – as we continue to interrogate ourselves with the same question.
You'd hope that, with every television viewer in the universe having witnessed proud whites standing alongside their black brethren behind the national flag, South Africans at least would believe in their own unity. Yet the reassurances we require from each other in the wake of so dreadful a past are as tormenting as ever. Deliver us from the humiliation so thoughtlessly dispensed down the years, we pray; soothe our fears of righteous retribution. Forgive us our prejudices. Keep us safe.
The one person who managed to convince us of our lovability despite our sins was Madiba and, like everyone else, I would have relished another chance during the opening ceremony to thank him for his selfless legacy of reconciliation. (Perhaps he'll put in an appearance at the final next month – fingers crossed.)
There will always be diehards among us. Collectively, though, we're trying to treat one another with the respect Madiba so eloquently embodied. That's why it was disappointing to find a recent special report in The Economist placing so much emphasis for our current failures on racism instead of the more straightforward though deeply regrettable socioeconomic inequality that exists in many other countries.
Although the world's most admired journal isn't widely read in South Africa, we live in such politically contested times that anything hyping racism's responsibility for shortcomings in the post-apartheid economic compromise (whereby the rich kept their assets while the poor majority benefitted through desegregation of social and economic instituitions plus state aid) has a tendency to feed Malema-like notions of nationalization and land grab.  
With extreme inequality presenting on racial lines for obvious historic reasons, highlighting racism as the principal public enemy stresses our differences rather than our similarities and promotes resentment. It's true that the rich should make far greater efforts towards social justice – in their own interests, if not for nobler motives – but redistributing existing wealth is not the panacea it is sometimes made out to be. (How far, after all, has seizing from whites to give to blacks served Zimbabwe's interests?)
While it would be a relief post-World Cup to ditch the idea that black South Africans can be expected to punish whites for ruling so cruelly for so long, we do tend instinctively towards dire metaphor in expressing our anxieties. Novels like J M Coetzee's Disgrace expose the deepest fears of whites in Africa; unspeakable fears that not only underpin racism but challenge once unassailable notions of superiority. The rape of the white woman in Coetzee's famous story feeds into the mythology of the sexual prowess of black men as well as the visceral anxiety lodged somewhere in the mind of many white Africans: how long can we go on dominating "these people" in our homes and factories before we become "the other" and experience retribution?
It's not really surprising, therefore, that the international media  - having reported on blood baths and apocalyptic endings for decades – seek signs of hateful hyperbole in the South African story about World Cup 2010.
A dear friend and great South African, Adele Lucas, who died earlier this month, was by contrast quite fearlessly dedicated to the idea that the privileged could help heal the wounds of the past not through dialogue but by redirecting ordinary businesses into poor communities. Having been a socialite in the glamorous world of tennis and international showbiz, Adele migrated professionally into Soweto during the perilous township turmoil of the late Seventies. A gifted communicator, she encountered daunting obstacles in establishing and expanding the hugely successful Soweto Festival. But she firmly believed she could make a difference in a divided society – and she did.
When we went together to listen to Hugh Masekela not long ago, a hawker rattling his wares outside the Market Theatre suddenly recognized Adele and threw a string of threaded beans around her neck. Laughing, she unfurled the baubles and handed them back, but he said they were a gift and insisted she keep them.
It was something Adele said to me recently that made me think about a simple adjustment we whites could make to a generally disgruntled attitude that often dwells more on criticism than appreciation of the country we live in, and sometimes makes us seem spoilt or condescending.
She and I were reminiscing about South Africans unexpectedly discovering in 1994 via the abundant compassion demonstrated by Nelson Mandela an idiom of humanity common to us all. Most whites, regretting the past, sincerely wished to mend it, Adele reckoned, but their anxieties trapped them in endless whingeing. However, when Madiba left us to fend for ourselves, Adele said, we would need a new language to convey our continuing search for ways of living agreeably together.

What she recommended was that we roll up our sleeves and help change the things we disapproved of, or, if unable to change them – like vuvuzelas, she gave as a mocking example – "change the attitude".  Let's stop complaining and emphasise the good things, she urged with a characteristically jaunty wave of her hand.