Rhoda Kadalie Is President Thabo Mbeki playing the race fiddle while Rome is burning? Has he not learned that when one uses race as a political rallying point, racial conflict gains a momentum of its own that is often difficult to reverse in times of crisis? Has ethnic conflict in Bosnia, Rwanda, Burundi and Serbia not taught him anything? Is the lesson of Zimbabwe not imminent enough? Or is Mbeki following Robert Mugabe’s example to achieve his not-so-hidden agenda? Mugabe also used race as a political rallying point before his country’s election to intimidate his opposition. Now that the dust has settled and the economy needs rebuilding he is not able to reverse the damage done and the divisions sown as a result of this election strategy. More worrying and equally astounding is the support Mbeki gets for his political agenda from his forever-faithful handmaidens, the Human Rights Commission and the public broadcaster, the SABC – institutions that should be independent of the government and whose duty it is to serve the entire public without fear or favour. This obsession with race and racism is nothing but a cover-up for non-delivery in the public sector and a means of obscuring issues of national importance. While the public is clamouring for solutions to crime, sexual violence, Aids, poverty, corruption and job creation, the government is dabbling with race and racism. What’s more, money is made available for these futile exercises while there is virtually no money for development. While the role of the commission is to monitor socio-economic rights, it has decided to prioritise racism, because it is incapable of doing precisely that. The focus on race and not discrimination is also very telling. Should the commission focus on investigating discrimination and take matters to court, it would be able to set precedents that would set human rights standards and prevent such violations from taking place again. It would also discover that the state and its institutions are often the biggest violators of human rights -as I discovered in my job as a human rights commissioner. For example, by investigating a complaint of racism against the ambulance services in Cape Town, we discovered that they were routinely racist in denying services to black areas. What our investigation enabled us to do, with the cooperation of the ambulance authorities, was to conduct training workshops in human rights with the ambulance personnel who operated the telephones. Similarly, a complaint of discrimination against an HIV-positive woman who applied for a job in correctional services indicated that the department did pre-employment testing on the woman without her consent. I can cite many examples of discrimination that were lodged before the commission that they often failed to investigate properly and successfully because of incompetence. My reports on racism on the farms in the Northern Cape were simply not followed up. These investigations also indicated that discrimination was not only a black and white issue but also had to do with inequalities in the areas of gender, ethnicity, class and religion. But race has become central to our discussion because one can always point a finger at the white oppressor, while the focus on gender and racial discrimination points to the oppressor in one’s bed, who might be of the same race. It would be foolish to deny that racism exists. We all know that. Apartheid has left its mark on all of us, more profoundly on blacks than whites, and it will take a long time before we are a truly non-racial society. The victory over apartheid was a victory over white minority domination, but the government under Mbeki behaves as though it regrets its negotiated settlement with its former oppressors, and he now seems to want to punish white South Africa for this compromise by harping constantly on the race issue.
Legitimate opposition is racialised and Tony Leon, the leader of the opposition, is demonised as an unreconstructed racist. The media is accused of racism. Editors who are critical are nothing but racist. Judge Willem Heath is silenced as a white judge. The list is endless. Nelson Mandela wasted no time in trying to reconcile a racially polarised society. He is admired, and reviled at times, for having brought the strangest of people together. When Mandela was called a “kaffir” by a coloured woman in Mitchells Plain, he completely immobilised his abuser by going to talk to her. Many of his gestures across racial lines, not least his visit to Betsie Verwoerd, left many of us puzzled, even annoyed – but therein lay the lesson for all of us. Racism flourishes in contexts where it has been internalised to such an extent that the victim begins to miss it when it begins to disappear.
Barney Pityana and his colleagues have reduced the Human Rights Commission to a race industry where his “black consciousness” hang-ups seem to play themselves out in public. These never-ending conferences on race and racism are used to legiti-mise this obsession, by inviting reputable speakers to participate in promoting the political agenda of the president. I am glad the public is beginning to see right through this exercise and is resisting the attempts by the government to further divide us. Rhoda Kadalie is a human rights campaigner and a member of the Mail & Guardian board of directors