Archbishop Desmond Tutu has appeared to endorse the notion of collective guilt for apartheid in comments made about whites, says South Africa’s leader of the opposition.
Democratic Alliance leader Tony Leon said in his regular Friday column, SA Today, that Tutu is, indeed, “no racial nationalist” and he has been one of the pioneers of non-racialism in South Africa “and continues to speak out against racism of all kinds”.
Tutu has also recently incurred the wrath of the ruling African National Congress for suggesting that South African sport should be based on merit.
However, Leon said Tutu’s recently expressed view that whites need to do more to acknowledge their debt to black South Africans is troubling.
“This is the very fallacy that Tutu himself resisted as chairperson of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which was founded on the principle that individual perpetrators of human rights abuses should have to account for their actions, but there would be neither collective amnesty nor collective punishment.”
Leon noted that DA chief whip Douglas Gibson has responded that whites are contributing generously to South Africa’s new democracy.
The DA leader said the problem with collective guilt, victimhood and redress is that one cannot avoid punishing some people who do not sin and reward some who do not suffer.
“As such, these notions stoke the fires of resentment and carry old group identities into the present and future, frustrating our efforts to build a non-racial society,” he said.
Leon said the case of Leon Christiaans should be taken as an example.
“Mr Christiaans, who is an engineer, successfully applied for an engineering post at [power parastatal] Eskom.
“Later, Eskom withdrew the offer and gave the post to someone else — not because Mr Christiaans was less qualified, but because he is coloured while the other candidate is black.”
Christiaans took Eskom to the Cape arbitration court. It ruled that Eskom had been correct, and that black people are more entitled to benefit from affirmative action than people from other groups that suffered under apartheid.
Leon said this “hierarchy of entitlement” is offensive to the non-racial ideals of the South African Constitution. It is also absent from South Africa’s laws on affirmative action and black economic empowerment. “Sadly, despite its shaky legal foundations, the court’s ruling merely confirms the way these policies are already applied in practice.”
What South Africa needs is not simply more contributions from white South Africans, but more contributions from everyone, Leon argued.
Leon said Tutu has often reminded South Africa of the need to build a more caring society. Leon noted that in his recent comments, Tutu added: “Many of us were dreaming of a new kind of country … that is compassionate, that makes everybody feel [they] matter.”
Leon agreed that South Africans “have not yet fulfilled that vision. But we cannot [do so] as blacks, whites, coloureds and Indians, but as South Africans, working together.” — I-Net Bridge