JUSTIN ARENSTEIN, Nelspruit | Thursday
TRIBALISM, class privilege and xenophobia are the new face of racism in South Africa, delegates to Mpumalanga’s first summit on racial discrimination heard on Wednesday.
Ehlanzeni district municipality mayor Jeri Ngomane warned that ethnic power groups in the country, including former Apartheid Bantustan leaders, were using tribalism to preserve their privileges.
Tribalist tensions had, he said, risen in Mpumalanga since the ousting of SiSwati-speaking premier Mathews Phosa and appointment of his isiNdebele-speaking successor Ndaweni Mahlangu in June 1999.
“We have drawn the battled lines against tribalism in Mpumalanga, but some tribalist Swazis still see the Ndebele as being in power now, and some tribalist Ndebele [openly] say they are now in control and will grow wealthy. These are the challenges [we] have to face,” said Ngomane.
Warning that tribalism and ethnic discrimination were the result of Apartheid policies that deliberately balkanised the country’s black inhabitants into small “manageable” ethnic groups, Ngomane urged South African leaders to recognise that tribalism was racism.
“People were balkanised into [ethnic homelands]. This institutionalised racism and ultimately led to xenophobia with each group trying to protect their own terrain and [privileges],” said Ngomane.
He warned that these same discriminatory policies had distorted South African history by ignoring the often vital roles played by Khoi San and black people in major events such as the Great Trek, the Anglo Boer wars and the nation’s economic development.
Premier Mahlangu also attacked tribalism and xenophobia during his keynote speech, noting that racism remained widespread despite a concerted government and civil society drive to eliminate unfair discrimination over the past seven years.
Highlighting government’s attempts to legislate against racism, Mahlangu said the groundwork had been laid and it was now essential for individual citizens to proactively tackle discrimination.
“We must, however, be wary of those who oppose our fight against racism. It is easy to identify such people. They are eager to block fundamental social transformation [and] undermine the capacity of the State to intervene by arguing that such things should be left to the market and that the State should be minimalist,” said Mahlangu.
These ‘counter-revolutionaries’ were invariably part of minority groups, he said, and protected existing privileges and land ownership granted to the white community under apartheid.
“[They] use threats of investment strikes and the ‘brain drain’ as a means to drive this agenda,” Mahlangu argued. The answer, he said, was the development of public education campaigns to liberate South Africans from the “psychological shackles” of colonialism and Apartheid and replace outdated loyalties with a new patriotism towards a non-racial nation. – African Eye News Service