I hear the Arch
I refer to the outraged responses to Archbishop Desmond Tutu’s wish that whites would say “I’m sorry” and “thank you” to “the vast majority of people in this country who have been so forgiving about the past”.
The fact is that any white people who lived in South Africa before 1994, or whose parents and grandparents lived here, have benefited from being white. Privilege was legislated in every part of our lives.
I grew up in a stable and happy home in which neither parent had to leave to find work. We received the best possible education and medical care. We had electricity, were literate, and could use public libraries and swimming pools. We have wonderful memories of family holidays at the beach and game reserves, and birthday treats at restaurants and theatres.
We were able to do this because we were white. All my special childhood memories occurred because of this.
Because of this privileged background, I and my husband have been able to hold down good jobs and to provide good education, healthcare, and a stable and safe home for our children.
In humility, I acknowledge that I benefited from the apartheid regime because I was white. I am sorry that I did not participate in the truth commission hearings because I felt I had nothing to apologise for. And I thank the majority of black South Africans whose parents and grandparents, through their work, made my childhood possible, in turn empowering me to create a similar childhood for my own children.
Thank you for the continuing love and generosity that have exacted no greater retribution from me than this: that I acknowledge that I benefited from a regime that privileged me because of my race, and that the privileges I and my family enjoyed, although we may not have realised it at the time, were undoubtedly at the expense of black people.
I am sorry it has taken so long for a white person like me to reach this point of repentance. — Jillian Carman, Johannesburg
I’ve noticed with growing alarm a disturbing tendency in South Africa whereby black people, or their views, are increasingly called racist. Recent cases involve Cape High Court Judge President John Hlophe and Tony Leon’s attack on President Thabo Mbeki’s version of history. Margaret Legum, writing in the Rhodes Journalism Review, defines racism in the modern world as “the result of the theory or idea that white people are superior to black people”.
Implicit in this definition is the view that black people cannot practise racism towards whites because they are unable to enforce the cultural belief that black people are superior. For Legum, racism is simply the ideology of white power.
She uses the term “race discrimination” to refer to acts by both black and white people that draw distinctions between the two groups. But such actions by black people are not racist, because there is no associated historical power.
As a black South African, I fully agree. Racism presupposes a history of power.
Larry Crawford, of Morehouse College in the US, writes in similar vein: “In the white supremacist context of European society, Africans have never been in the position to exercise power against Europeans based on the colour of their skin. Racism is discrimination by a group against another for the purpose of subjugation or maintaining subjugation.”
He adds: “Racism is a European manufacture. They planted and cultivated it everywhere they went. It is a tool of white supremacy that elevates the European and creates oppression and antagonistic infighting among the remaining disempowered population.”
And The Holocaust Martyrs’ and Heroes’ Remembrance Authority website notes: “Racists divide the world into ‘superior’ and ‘inferior’ races, and believe that, by nature and fate, the superior peoples have the right to dominate the inferior. Russell Ally, of the United Nations High Commission for Human Rights, has this to say: “But if we are finally to bury the scourge of racism, we have to intensify the efforts of empowerment and black advancement. It is difficult to maintain racist beliefs in the face of substantial changes in the prestige and power position of the former dominated and subordinate groups.” — Vusumzi Nobadula, Port Elizabeth
Lessons for humankind
On a recent trip to Berlin I visited the Pergamon Museum and the Holocaust Museum. Each carries a message for all humankind.
The Pergamon houses sculptures and mosaics from ancient civilisations in Turkey and Iraq. I had never before been exposed to the wonderful artworks from Islamic civilisation, a treasure beyond belief. No doubt they should all be located where they rightfully belong, but at least they are safe from American bombs.
Some of these treasures come from Iraq, and the mind cannot grasp how the United States could have conceived of a hugely destructive campaign in an area filled with the physical legacy of ancient civilisation.
The Holocaust Museum, in the centre of a country that embarked on a campaign of genocide of six million people, provides a different experience. It consists of more than an acre of stone graves, made even starker by heavy snowfall.
The museum exhibits many family histories presented a graphic way. Most shocking are photographs from Belsen and Auschwitz of the starving skeletons of inmates just before death. There are also graphics of the network of Jew hunters who rounded them up and brought them to the gas ovens.
Computers enable visitors to access a database of more than a million names of Nazi victims, where I found 10 Turoks, with their personal details. Some were doubtless members of my father’s family in the Ukraine. It was all too much, and I broke down.
I record this because too many of us live in complacency and indifference to the massive assaults on human beings and their cultural artefacts by which our civilisation is perpetuated.
Let the lesson not be lost in South Africa, where a bloodbath has been averted and where there is still a promise of a diverse society finding a civilised way of coexistence — not only for each of its social and cultural components, but also for those who have yet to find a place in the sun. — Ben Turok, MP
Tiresome religious stereotypes
I am grateful that you allowed Steve de Gruchy’s excellent “Of sport and religion” a prominent space in your last edition. I must agree that the Mail & Guardian coverage of religion, and specifically Christianity, betrays a biased secularist agenda long past its sell-by date. For a paper that has shown remarkable socio-political maturity, this lapse is mystifying.
De Gruchy makes the obvious point that Christianity is an African religion. Anyone speaking or writing about Christianity in Africa should have learnt some respect for the dynamic indigenous forms of the faith emerging from this soil.
Perhaps the M&G should require its religious contributors to do what self-respecting journalists do in other spheres — immerse themselves in the contemporary world of religious life, to be informed by vibrant realities rather than tiresome stereotypes. These stereotypes are often the property of embittered individuals who have had some dark religious experience imposed on them.
There is much in the world of religion that can and should be discredited, but much more, past and present, that requires from the non-religious a measure of respect. — Gavin Taylor, district bishop in the Methodist Church
Achmat is the spoiler
After being involved in numerous engagements with the Treatment Action Campaign, including efforts to resolve the dispute over TAC participation at the United Nations General Assembly Special Session (Ungass) on HIV/Aids, I have learnt that its success or failure depends on the balance of power among three broad groupings in the TAC.
The first, including Mark Heywood and Fatima Hassan, comprises more rational members who acknowledge that concessions must be made for gains in other areas. We initially engaged them to resolve the dispute over TAC participation at Ungass. The possibility of an amicable solution was there until TAC “rejectionists” took over.
For this group, personified by Zackie Achmat, government bashing is an end in itself. For them, no good can come from engagement with the health department until the government accepts that only anti-retroviral drugs can save South Africa from HIV/Aids. A positive response to a government invitation is, in principle, a bad thing.
The last group is mainly township youth, called periodically on to the streets of Cape Town. Represented in TAC general secretary Sipho Mthathi, they are driven by passion to deal with the HIV/Aids challenge. This energy can be positively used to help communities to access government’s prevention, care and treatment services. But it can also be misdirected.
Mthathi has not been able to defend the integrity of her office, whose status has been questioned as window dressing. She led the TAC delegation in discussions with the health department to resolve the dispute over participation at the Ungass, and was later invited by the department to join the country delegation as a TAC office bearer.
After being out of public activity for many months, Achmat came back to lead the press conference that rejected the invitation. Last week, he revived his populist grandstanding style, criticising almost all the government has done to address HIV/Aids.
The first opportunity to have a TAC representative in the country delegation to an international forum has been squandered. Achmat and his anti-government lobby are back in action. — Sibani Mngadi, Department of Health spokesperson
Anti-Moon smear plain silly
As a long-time Unification believer, I write regarding Tom Phillips’s “How football recruits for Reverend Moon” (April 28).
Hopefully, the bias is plain enough for your readers to recognise that both the writing and the decision to run the article offend the intelligence and dignity of your readers.
It is a silly notion to imagine someone running a football team as a way of drawing people into a “sect”. Even if one wanted to ascribe evil motivations to Moon, as Phillips obviously does, the innuendo lacks imagination. Would a similar accusation be made against Catholic missionaries establishing schools in Brazil?
The quote from Nelito Camara is frightening, as he imagines “brainwashed” people issuing veiled threats to “play hardball” with the police. Has Phillips ever written a scare-tactic article on the propensity for small-town authorities in the region to “play hardball”? If you ask me, that’s a genuine problem.
But it is the suggestion that “the Moonies” have evaded tax to the tune of $31,5-million a year that really diminishes the paper. It is a baseless accusation for starters. But this would be a crime of enormous magnitude — and Phillips reports a police raid turning up some laptops, a satellite phone and a pistol.
It’s a crime to have a satellite phone in the Brazilian countryside? And it’s hard to find a pistol in Campo Grande? — Frank Kaufmann, New York
Well packaged
John Matshikiza’s tirade against Vuyo Mbuli (“A host of new talk”, April 13) cannot go unchallenged. The Vuyo Mbuli Show was a well-packaged show, which created a platform for many people to express their views.
It served its purpose as a public platform and not a boxing ring of prejudice or political correctness that Matshikiza perhaps expected it to be.
Well done to Mbuli for being fair, impartial and fearless in making all South Africans feel comfortable to ring in with even the most bizarre of views, without fear of reprimand. He was well prepared, well read, articulate and an excellent facilitator of good conversation. — Ongkopotse JJ Tabane