The challenge of racism still permeating South African society needs to be debated honestly and fearlessly, President Thabo Mbeki said on Friday.
Writing in his weekly newsletter on the African National Congress website, Mbeki said racism remains a ”daily feature of our lives, a demon that must be exorcised” to achieve national reconciliation.
It has to be confronted openly and on a sustained basis if the constitutional imperative of a non-racial society is to be achieved.
”Perhaps the one issue on which we do not spend enough time listening to one another, the challenge we should debate honestly and fearlessly, is the scourge of racism that permeates so much of the fabric of our society.
”The favourite words used to close down and prohibit any discussion on racism in our country are ‘don’t play the race card’.
”It is also argued that such discussion is inimical to the task to achieve national reconciliation,” he said.
Mbeki referred to a recent report prepared by a group of independent investigators who had been asked to assess the cause of a labour dispute, as well as conflicts within management, in one South African company.
The report told the story that racism had a direct, negative material impact on the lives of people, especially the working people, communicating the message that apartheid was not dead.
”It is not something we should put out of sight, and therefore out of mind, by responding to all attempts to confront it as ‘playing the race card’,” he said.
”[There is] still a significant proportion of people among the white minority, but by no means everybody who is white, that continues to live in fear of the black, and especially African, majority.”
Mbeki said a colleague in the government had posed the rhetorical question: Why are the whites so determined to frighten themselves?
”The answer, of course, is that they have taken no such decision. Rather, the problem is that entrenched racism dictates that justification must be found for the persisting white fears of ‘die swart gevaar‘ [literally, ‘the black peril’].”
All incidents of crime, preferably broadcast as loudly as possible, provided such justification, as had other issues.
Mbeki quoted Freedom Front Plus leader Pieter Mulder, who said: ”We do not know each other and do not debate with each other. Two-minute speeches from this podium are not debates.”
Similarly, Democratic Alliance leader Tony Leon had said: ”As a nation we should spend more time listening to each other, and not be too quick to judge as illegitimate the concerns and expressions of any group.”
Mbeki said that as South Africans celebrate Human Rights Day on March 21, it remains to be seen whether they have the will to know and to debate with one another.
”The resolve to educate ourselves to not be too quick to judge as illegitimate the concerns and expressions of any group must include not being too quick to judge as illegitimate the concerns and expressions of the African people, the historic victims of racism, who remain deeply disturbed that some in positions of power still think it is normal to speak of them as ‘kaffirs’, and others among our white compatriots think that it is natural to ask the question: ‘Since they are black, how do we know they are not criminals?’,” he said. — Sapa