The ghosts of racism

by Editor · March 9, 2011

Almost 17 years after South Africans stood in long queues to officially bury apartheid, the ghost of racism continues to haunt us.

The reported observation by government spokesman Jimmy Manyi that the �over-supply� of coloureds in the Western Cape is a supposed economic disadvantage should alarm us not only for its content.

The idea that coloureds should leave their ancestral homes in the Western Cape to satisfy the policies of the government (and Mr Manyi has said he was �only articulate[ing] the government�s view�) is patently absurd. Mr Manyi�s remark�which he made, crucially, as the powerful director-general of the Department of Labour�reflects notions of social engineering that would not have been foreign to the apartheid regime.

The ANC�s equivocation over the Manyi issue suggests that his opinions are not unique within the party. By rights, a government spokesman who has expressed racist views should be immediately dismissed�unless he was indeed articulating, as he has claimed, the government�s views. His limp apology through a third party for the offence people have taken, rather than the content of his remark, should constitute another firing offence.

The forthright response to Mr Manyi by Trevor Manuel, minister in the presidency, is therefore welcome. In a letter to Mr Manyi, the former finance minister wrote: �I now know who Nelson Mandela was talking about when he said in the dock that he had fought against white domination and that he had fought against black domination. Jimmy, he was talking about fighting against people like you.�

Despite the stinging criticism of his own government�the minister suggested that �racism has infiltrated the highest echelons of government��Mr Manuel has saved the ANC some face and may have succeeded in tempering people�s outrage. He has done his party a great service, for which he is unlikely to be thanked.

Coloured people, meanwhile, will be concerned that Mr Manyi�s rhetoric does in fact reflect the government�s thinking. Since the fall of apartheid, it has been a common complaint that the ANC has failed to acknowledge the very real suffering of coloureds under apartheid, and itself discriminates against that group now.

More than that, the language of displacement hits a raw nerve in a community still suffering the devastating social effects of forced removals under apartheid.

The Manyi episode has brought South Africa�s fragile state of race relations into focus again. Two years ago Afrikaans singer Steve Hofmeyr issued what amounts to a white supremacist rant in which he appeared to claim personal credit, by virtue of his DNA, for the accomplishments of white people in Europe centuries ago. The entertainer doubtless articulated the zealous views of some obtuse whites, but they were neither accurate nor helpful in a dialogue on race.

Mr Hofmeyr�s career seems not to have suffered on account of his repulsive tract, with even mainstream television offering him continued high profile exposure.

And therein resides a fundamental problem: South Africans are so tolerant of racism that the expression of racist views tends to have no serious repercussions. More than that, both Mr Manyi and Mr Hofmeyr will claim that their statements are not racist. Certainly, neither regards himself as a racist.

On racism, South Africans are well-guided by the social teachings of the Catholic Church. The bishops of the United States expressed that teaching most forcefully in a 1979 pastoral statement: �Racism is a sin; a sin that divides the human family, blots out the image of God among specific members of that family, and violates the fundamental human dignity of those called to be children of the same Father. Racism is the sin that says some human beings are inherently superior and others essentially inferior because of race. It is the sin that makes racial characteristics the determining factor for the exercise of human rights.�

It seems that in 2011 there is still a place in South Africa for racial chauvinists and their loathsome views, be they white supremacists or the proponents of a narrow black hegemony.

This was not the promise of 1994, and it is not a tribute to those who sacrificed so much for the promise of a South Africa free of bigotry.