Resolution of South Africa’s ”national question”, centred on building a truly democratic, non-racial, non-sexist and prosperous South Africa, is essential to avoid social conflict, President Thabo Mbeki said on Friday.
The recent controversy relating to the operations of the South African National Blood Service has highlighted the racist legacy that continues to blight South Africa.
”Yet there are some in our society who are very determined to ensure that we discuss this particular challenge as little as possible,” Mbeki said in his weekly newsletter in the African National Congress’s online publication, ANC Today.
To suppress this discussion, they present many interventions in this regard as ”playing the race card” for narrow political purposes, he said.
As was seen in the debate about black economic empowerment (BEE), and earlier discussions about affirmative action, it is not difficult for some to present initiatives to build a non-racial society in the most negative light.
The objective to address ”the national question” stands at the heart of the struggle against racism and apartheid.
In South Africa, the national question expresses itself as the oppression and exploitation of the black majority by a white minority.
”The first task of our struggle, of the national democratic revolution, was to defeat the system of white minority domination and replace it with democratic rule, in the context of building a non-racial society.
”In part, our ongoing efforts to entrench and consolidate our democratic system have to do with the further deracialisation of our politics, and the cultivation of the sentiment among all our people of a common patriotism and a shared sense of nationhood,” Mbeki said.
”Sometimes, within the context of careless discussion about the evolution of our society away from its racist past, all manner of unfounded allegations are made about so-called reverse racism. Allegations are even made boldly that we, too, have become racists.
”However, I have no hesitation in asserting firmly that as a movement and government, we have performed very well with regard to our sustained efforts to address the national question — in our case this being the struggle to build a non-racial society.
”Our history has made it inevitable that we must and would focus on the resolution of the national question, centred on the building of a truly democratic, non-racial, non-sexist and prosperous South Africa.
”Experience in the rest of our continent and elsewhere in the world must surely tell us that we are well advised to persist in the pursuit of these objectives.
”Thus, as we successfully address the national question by ensuring the eradication of the legacy of colonialism and apartheid, and constructing a non-racial society, we will certainly spare our country and people the painful agony of the social conflict that would result from a failure to attend to the national question,” Mbeki said. — Sapa