Red card for the race card
South Africa’s past has been dominated by issues of race, and so will the future be. The social engineering of apartheid inevitably must be undone. This must involve a measure of racial differentiation.
It is a matter of debate whether the current process of inverting that social engineering of former times, and the resolute haste in which this is being done, will succeed in its stated aims. Little is being done to reassure those members of minority groups who believe that affirmative action and black economic empowerment initiatives are marginalising their economic and civic aspirations. Indeed, some members of the governing party have invoked the spectre of racism when such criticism has been voiced, adding to a perception of victimisation among minorities.
It is regrettable that the ruling party, and even the country’s president, should increasingly invoke the issue of race when criticised by members of minority groups–even more so when the race card is being played against white commentators whose credentials in opposing apartheid are unassailable.
Thus, when in late September anti-rape activist and journalist Charlene Smith criticised the government over South Africa’s alarming rape statistics (according to government statistics, 113,7 per 100000 population), President Thabo Mbeki himself responded trenchantly. Mr Mbeki implied that Ms Smith had suggested that “our cultures, traditions and religions as Africans inherently makes African man a potential rapist …[a] view which defines the African people as barbaric savages.” Of course, she had not suggested anything of the kind, or even mentioned race in her critique.
Mr Mbeki and the ANC have exhibited an escalating inclination to invoke racism when responding to criticism posed by white South Africans (for critcism by black South Africans, there seems to be an ideological set of asperions)–on matters such as Mr Mbeki’s eccentric positions on Aids and the associated lack of treatment for its victims, or the perceived excesses of black economic empowerment that benefit only a few businessmen while the rest of the country remains economically disenfranchised, or the government’s incoherent policy on Zimbabwe.
If the critic is white, the theory seems to suggest, then the criticism is rooted in an anti-African, colonialist and racist outlook that informs a desire to see South Africa fail. The criticism is therefore judged invalid.
While it is certainly true that there are some South Africans who wish to undermine the government, the vast majority does not. Such critics are not by definition unpatriotic racists. By insinuating that they are, the president plays a precarious game of racial intimidation in a bid to stifle dissent. This surely is incompatible with Mr Mbeki’s model of a non-racial democracy (which he then accuses his critics of seeking to undermine).
The president has said that white critics “do not believe that our non-racial democracy will survive and succeed.” The non-racial dimension is moribund, and the democracy harmed, when the president’s preferred response to bona fide criticism lies in playing the race card.
Mr Mbeki and his party are not racists by any means. However, presuming racism on behalf of critics from minority groups constitutes racial prejudice.
South Africa will be in real trouble if the race card truly becomes the nation’s trump card.
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