No-one, anywhere, will stop government from confronting racism and continuing to build a non-racial South Africa, President Thabo Mbeki vowed on Thursday.
Replying in the National Assembly to points made during Wednesday’s debate on the presidency budget vote, Mbeki said the struggle against racism would be with South Africans for a long time.
This was because the racist legacy of colonialism and apartheid would be around for a long time.
”We did not achieve liberation to perpetuate a master-servant relationship in our country.”
Mbeki said he had to make the issue clear: ”There is nobody in our country, or anywhere in the world, who is going to stop us from confronting the cancer of racism and continuing the struggle to build a non-racial South Africa.
”The repeated charge that we play a so-called race card is not going to deter us from continuing the struggle to defeat racism.”
He was referring to statements made during Wednesday’s debate by Democratic Alliance (DA) leader Tony Leon, who, in a hard-hitting attack, said Mbeki had used the ”race card” to deflect criticism, rekindling fear and hatred among the population.
Mbeki said: ”Between me and some of my white compatriots, there is a great divide, a chasm, on the issue of racism… they do not like any reference to the issue of racism, perhaps because they want to forget the past.
”On the other hand, we neither want to, nor will we, forget the past,” he said.
These white compatriots argued that to advance national reconciliation, the struggle against racism had to be ended.
”We disagree. Persisting racism and racial disparities in our country constitute an obstacle to the achievement of the goal of national reconciliation.
”Precisely because we seek and value national reconciliation, we will continue the struggle against racism.
”The white compatriots to whom I have referred say that apartheid is a thing of the past, and that to refer to it is to pull the country backwards.
”We disagree. Any denial of the past and its impact on the present would make it impossible for us to focus on the real problems facing our people, which are problems arising from the legacy of colonialism and apartheid,” he said.
The debate would be uneven and acrimonious as long as the situation persisted that ”some among us treat the views of those who know what racism means, with disdain” and did not heed the call, made [for example] by Freedom Front leader Dr Pieter Mulder, for all to tolerate divergent views.
”Fortunately, there are many in our country, both black and white, who understand very well that reconciliation is not just a ‘feel-good concept’; that the finalisation of the work of the TRC did not end the need to strive for reconciliation; that reconciliation is not, and cannot be, the status quo,” Mbeki said. – Sapa