This is an extract from the debate in Parliament last week where President Thabo Mbeki responded to questions from MPs Malusi Gigaba (African National Congress) asked President Thabo Mbeki whether the government had a strategy for dealing with racism and the continuing racial divides in the country and, if this was the case, “how does such strategy address the perception of marginalisation that exists amongst the different language and social groups in our country?”
Mbeki replied: “The struggle against apartheid was the struggle against racism. Apartheid institutionalised a system which was characterised by wealth and privilege for one sector of our community, which was white, and it denied this right to the rest of our population, which was black. “The establishment of our democratic dispensation in 1994 did not expunge from our society all vestiges of racism. The struggle to create a non-racial and non- sexist society must therefore continue. “The problem is not just about the enactment of progressive laws that have been passed in this house after 1994. It must also be about such practical issues as the deracialisation of our living areas, the protection of farm workers from farmers who continue to violate our laws, and so on.
“The democratic transformation is in itself designed to reverse the racism of the past and create conditions that I think all of us in this country sought to do for equal access by everybody to the rights and benefits that are available to all citizens in our country …” Cassie Aucamp (Afrikaner Eenheidsbeweging) asked: “Mr President, Mr Gigaba’s question mentioned the marginalisation of communities. I think the most significant contribution to marginalisation of the Afrikaner community is that we are constantly – morning, noon and night – in the dogbox. “Every thing that can go wrong in this country is made the result of the atrocities of the past and we are the atrociter, Afrikaners, who created apartheid. At times an open hand is reached out to our people to come and be of value in the building up of the country but in the next moment the open hand turns into a fist trying to land another knockout on the culprits of the past. Do you foresee a time when the books of the past will finally be closed?”
Mbeki: “Honourable Aucamp, there were many good Afrikaners who were part of the struggle to rid the system of apartheid. Among them were Bram Fischer. The honourable General Constand Viljoen worked very hard on the eve of the elections in 1994 to make sure that our country did not sink into a civil war. That was a very, very important contribution. “I think it would be incorrect for anybody to blame apartheid on Afrikaners in general. I think it would be correct to look at the evolution of our history to analyse the matter differently, rather than saying you are Afrikaner and therefore you are responsible for apartheid and damn you. That would be incorrect. “I am sure the honourable Aucamp would know that last year, honourable Minister [of Environmental Affairs and Tourism Mohammed] Valli [Moosa] and I interacted with sections of the Afrikaner leadership to discuss the question of what we do together to create this new society. I have a report here about the outcome of those discussions. Other discussions that have taken place since the elections in 1999 with sections of the Afrikaner leadership and Afrikaner organisations focus precisely on this question.
‘Therefore, I think it would be incorrect for anybody to seek to condemn the Afrikaners in this country as a people for this system. To analyse apartheid in a particular way, to come to some conclusions about how it came about, how it was implemented.
“I think, therefore, any feeling among the Afrikaners that because you are Afrikaner you are condemned for the past of our country we cannot accept. “What we have to address is the fact that our country remains very, very racially divided. Divided in a way that retracts what the architects of apartheid and the architects of colonialism sought to do – to disadvantage the black majority in the interests of advantaging the white minority. That is a question which all of us must address and all of us must include the very, very many Afrikaners who are very committed to addressing that legacy. “It will not help us if we pretend that the past does not continue to define the present, because it does. I think a recognition of that would enable us to deal with racism properly.”