EMSIE FERREIRA, BRYAN PEARSON , Cape Town | Thursday 8.30pm
PRESIDENT Thabo Mbeki on Thursday touched on his week-old remark that racism is still alive in post-apartheid South Africa in a much softer tone, assuring whites that he knows many of them have seen the light.
In his opening speech to parliament last Friday, Mbeki quoted virulent anti-black statements from a white engineer as an example of the level of racism that thrives in South Africa ten years after the dismantling of apartheid.
Opposition parties called the example crude and when Mbeki returned to the topic Thursday in his answer to the debate on his address, he was courting whites. This time he quoted letters he had received from two white Afrikaners who rejoiced at being part of a non-racial South Africa.
One, a founder member of four rightwing organisations, had written that after initial resistance to black rule he is now “perhaps for the first time proud to carry a South African passport” and that he enjoys mixing with blacks. The other implored the president to understand that “while in the Afrikaans segment there are still those who are racists … not all South Africans, despite their colour, are racist.”
However, Mbeki did not back off from his hard-hitting message last Friday that government will not rest to overturn the inequalities of the past. He said more than 90% of engineers and accountants in the country remain white and that this has to be changed.
But instead of mentioning controversial affirmative action policies, he said instead that government will exhange the situation by improving human resources, notably by upgrading education. — AFP