Could it be that state capture ruined my marriage?

It’s no great insight to point out that the personal is political. But that doesn’t make it any less painful when you have to live the truth of it.

The converse is also true: broad political trends can come home to roost in your personal space, and indeed, mess up your life.

As individuals, each of us is a representative of our social group. Obviously, we are a lot more than that, but we are our demography made granular. In this way, wherever I go, I represent white men.

I like to think I am not your average white man, but maybe this is simply a vain conceit, and I am actually quite representative.

It’s hard, but we have to learn not to take it personally when people treat us according to the archetype that we represent, and not our individual character.

In this way, I try not to be offended when I am characterised as a racist White Monopoly Capitalist by people I encounter on social media. Often it’s for comic effect, and here the best response is simply to chuckle along with all the good-natured humour one can muster.

A fake advert for Bell Pottinger’s services that’s been doing the rounds on social media.

People who tell me they want the land back, are just generalising around the trope about white people. I might own no land, and my most valuable asset might be a flatscreen TV, but it’s a fact that white people are vastly more privileged than our black compatriots and we have a long history of cynical land theft. So we can’t really argue with that generalisation.

I might not be racist, but again, it’s true that white culture is steeped in racism and we have a lot of unlearning to do in that space. One can’t take that characterisation personally either.

But what is difficult is when the social mood becomes personalised against you by those in your own household.

For instance, in the completely justified climate of outrage at sexual abuse of women and gender-based violence, one sometimes comes to represent all men. As the only male in your house, you might find the anger and resentment at the murder of women being directed at yourself.

Personally, one might never have lifted a finger against a woman in anger, but still. You represent men. Our awful, violent, entitled, abusive, yet fragile gender must carry collective responsibility for the shameful acts of abuse and violence that we commit.

We must also campaign with our fellow males to change this behaviour.

At the same time, we must try to be understanding when the bitterness about GBV is directed at us, even if personally we might have committed no such crimes. The political becomes personal.

I believe I lived out this phenomenon during my former marriage. With a black wife and a mixed-race child, I was usually the only white person in the house. I therefore often found myself becoming a cypher for all the evil committed by my people. The colonialism, the race hate, the apartheid, but also the petty micro-aggressions and ignorant racism that can so often be part of our make-up.

I understand that while I may not have committed such acts personally I must sometimes be the face of racism.

However, it’s hard to do that at home. Over time, it becomes more and more difficult to slip out of your generalised character as a placeholder, a representative of your highly problematic race and to become yourself, the loving father and partner.

Other people may also find it hard to make this distinction. The resentment they feel about the evils of racism may just come to be projected upon you permanently.

This may have been part of what happened when my mixed-race marriage crashed and burned in the time of the divisive White Monopoly Capital campaign. This social-media offensive was launched with global PR firm Bell Pottinger to distract attention from state capture.

It succeeded to an extent, but it did so by emphasising the economic dominance of white people and blaming them for any attempt to prosecute those guilty of state capture.

White people are guilty of many economic and racist crimes, but that does not absolve the looters of our state. The campaign to fudge the issue held up white people as a straw man, when in fact state capture was the problem at hand.

The campaign set back race relations in our socially volatile country by decades. It also affected race relations in my marriage. As the local rep of White Monopoly Capital, I may have come to be despised by my ex-wife for land theft as much as my failure to fold the laundry or find a decent job.

This is all water under the bridge today. We have both carved out pleasant lives of our own, and we co-parent our lovely daughter with loving commitment.

But every now and then, I can’t help wondering whether state capture helped cock up my marriage. When gender and race relations fall apart, it has broad social ramifications, but also personal ones. In homes and offices across the country, on social media, people’s relationships are affected too.

Men and women battle to communicate. Black people and white people too. We are our country, and our country lives in us. Its problems are expressed through us.

One can only imagine that fixing that must begin at the personal level too. Between you, and me.

Hagen Engler. Picture: Supplied

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