Stop treating racists with kid gloves, Cosmas Desmond urges the government.
The continuing crime of racism makes even a visit to your favourite bar a depressing experiencePRESIDENT Nelson Mandela has been hailed, acclaimed, canonised and even deified by the press for the firm stand he took in his address at the opening of parliament on the need for law and order and an end to the “culture of entitlement”. Personally, I would have thought that people who have been exploited, oppressed and impoverished for 300 years were entitled to something.
If Alan Boesak is “entitled” to a salary of R20 000 a month because of the significant, but relatively short- lived, part he played in the struggle, what about those who lost their homes, their land, their children?
Nevertheless, it is doubtless true that boycotts, taking hostages, etc are not the most appropriate way of drawing attention to one’s grievances in the new dispensation. But if blacks must change their ways, surely whites must too.
Yet the president’s speech contained no threat to use “the full power of the law” against those who continue to express and practise the most blatant racism. If black police cannot toyi-toyi, why should whites still be allowed to call them “kaffirs”?
The Freedom Charter, of which, as a socialist, I am not a great fan, but which is supposed to be holy writ for the ANC, states that “the preaching and practice of national, race or colour discrimination and contempt shall be a punishable crime”. But it isn’t.
The ANC has in the meanwhile become so “liberal” that it is prepared to allow the right of freedom of speech to even the most rabid racists: a right that is not recognised by international conventions. Racists do not have any right to express their racism, either in words or in deeds. Racism denies people’s humanity, the basis of all human rights. The United Nations’ Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination says even the propagation of racist ideas should be a criminal offence.
Yet, I am legally advised, in the “new” South Africa it is not possible to prosecute people for being racist. So they continue not only to enjoy their ill-gotten wealth but to defend it with racist practices: what change has there been, for example, in the conditions of employment of domestic servants? Some legal provisions, yes; but in practice?
Occasionally — purely for purposes of research, you understand — I go into a bar and sit and listen to the conversation of the white people whose skills, we are told, we so desperately need.
Having listened to them, I am surprised that people, including the new commissioner of police, can be surprised that police in Soweto use racially abusive language. Of course they do; what other language do they know? “Kaffirs” are still “kaffirs” and “coolies” are still “coolies”. I have even heard Mandela himself, for all his justified, international renown, dismissed as “only a kaffir president, after all”.
Today — in 1995, a year after “liberation” — I heard that “blacks have no brains”; “you can’t teach them anything”; “they don’t know how to work”; and that they were quite incapable of dealing with the huge house and vast garden of a couple of moronic, but nevertheless affluent, whites.
The owner of the bar stated quite categorically that she would not employ black waitresses; if they applied she would tell them the job had been taken. The local white geniuses, some of whom looked as thick as at least six short planks, endorsed her stand: “Ja, affirmative action.” The fact that their conversation could be overheard by the existing black staff was irrelevant; they did not really exist.
Why should blacks still have to put up with such behaviour and, at the same time, be expected to be patient, disciplined, conciliatory and even grateful to whites? (And why can’t I find a decent bar to drink in? I certainly cannot go to that one again.)
Our society is still riddled with racism. Look, for example, at the readiness with which the police, the press and the public accepted the story of the Durban man who claimed to have been kidnapped, tied up, beaten and starved by blacks — for no apparent reason; no ransom demands were made, for example. It should have been obvious it was a hoax — as it turned out to be — but people were quite prepared to believe blacks behave in that manner.
The man himself, and those who colluded with him, were guilty not only of wasting police time but also of racism. He might be charged with the former offence but, unfortunately, it seems, he cannot be charged with the latter. Individual racism is still quite legal. And as rife as ever.
It could even be argued that the government of national unity itself is fundamentally racist, in that it accepts that there are different “races” and that its task is to help them to live together: basically, on white terms.
In the 1980s, the United Democratic Front was moving towards non-racialism; now we are back to multiracialism. And multiracialism is racist. “Races” do not exist; they were created, on a pseudo-biological basis, to “justify” colonial exploitation. As long as blacks belong to a different “race”, they will not only be different — which, fortunately, they are — but also inferior.
They will be, as they already are, acceptable only in so far as they approximate to white norms. Whites, after all, cannot be expected to adapt to African — that is, “inferior” — standards.
By all means let us have strong government, but if the hand is to be firm it has also to be even. At present the big stick is only being wielded to hold back the black hordes, while whites are being treated with kid
I realise that the minister of justice is preoccupied with getting his knickers untwisted over the Truth Commission, but I suggest that he should also give some attention to the continuing crime of racism: introduce legislation that will enable these fat, smug, racist bastards to be prosecuted — pour encourager les
Cosmas Desmond is author of The Discarded People. He was a Pan Africanist Congress candidate in the 1994