Speech at the Opening Session of the National Conference on Racism

Johannesburg, August 30, 2000.
Issued by: Office of the Presidency

Chairperson,
Distinguished delegates:
On behalf of our Government, I am happy to welcome you all to this important
Conference and to wish you success in your deliberations.
I would also like to thank Dr Barney Pityana and the rest of the Human
Rights Commission, most sincerely, for the work they have done, first of all
to ensure that this Conference is held and that it becomes the success it
surely will be.
The public discussion that has taken place in our country in the last few
months on the issue of racism, demonstrates the point unequivocally that in
this area, we are faced with one of the most contentious issues on our
national agenda.
Its discussion does not lead to the national feel-good atmosphere we all
experience whenever our national sports teams score a victory over a foreign
competitor or when other benign events occur that help us to forget the
persisting racial divisions in our society.
Arguments are advanced honestly that such a discussion, about racism, can
only lead to the division of our country into mutually antagonistic racial
camps.
It is also said that it might very well encourage racial conflict,
destroying the progress we have achieved towards national reconciliation,
towards the birth of a happy rainbow nation.
It has been argued that those who point to the persistence of racism in our
country are themselves racist. Those who propagate affirmative action are
accused of seeking to introduce reverse racism, or, more directly, of resort
to anti-white racism.
Some assert that the description 'racist' is merely an epithet used by bad
people to insult others, as well as a means of intimidating and silencing
those who hold views critical of the government.
Alternatively, it is said that the issue of racism is brought up by
unscrupulous politicians, in an effort to mobilise black constituencies to
support them. After all, so it is said, we ended apartheid and therefore
racism, when we became a non-racial democracy in 1994.
On the other hand, others within our society argue that those who are most
vocal in seeking to suppress discussion of this issue are those who
benefited from centuries of colonial and apartheid racial domination.
These will go on to say that the privileged do not want this discussion
because they want to maintain their privileged positions at all costs.
It is also said that in order to achieve this result, the privileged work
hard to convince both themselves as well as the rest of society, that what
is being complained of does not, in fact, exist, except for isolated
incidents.
This is categorised as the denial mode, in terms of which the dominant
instruments of propaganda, which, by definition, are at the disposal of the
privileged, are used to obstruct recognition of reality.
The aggrieved will go further to argue that the privileged sectors of our
society, accustomed to setting the national agenda, continue in the effort
to set the national agenda, regardless of what the majority of our citizens
might desire.
Of course, by this time, the latter have been empowered by the establishment
of the democratic system to believe that they have the democratic right,
openly and legitimately, to set this national agenda.
The point is also made that our process of national reconciliation has been
somewhat of a charade. In this regard, it is said that only the victims of
racism have responded to the call to forgive and to let bygones be bygones.
The charge is made that the perpetrators and beneficiaries of racial
oppression and exploitation have acted merely to defend their interests,
refusing to extend their own hand towards the victim, in a true spirit of
reconciliation.
Among others, the response of certain sectors of our society to the request
to them to make submissions to the TRC helped to reinforce the view that the
beneficiaries of white minority rule were unwilling to contribute to the
process of national reconciliation. The same can be said of the initial
response of sections of the media to the decision of the Human Rights
Commission to hold hearings on the issue of racism in the media.
It is of course obvious to all participants at this Conference that colour
and race would, essentially define the two schools of thought represented in
the remarks I have just made.
Necessarily, this adds to the acrimony, the unpleasantness and, therefore,
the difficulty of conducting a rational and even-tempered discussion on the
question of racism.
With all these problems, some might legitimately pose the question - why not
abandon this discussion until some later date, when we can discuss all these
matters in a more propitious atmosphere! The Government is firmly of the
view that this would be a very serious mistake.
The postponement of this discussion would sharply exacerbate the danger of
the social instability implicit in the racial divisions that continue to
characterise our society.
Nevertheless, as we enter into discussion, it is clear that all of us will
have to make a supreme effort to allow all points of view to be heard and
discussed in an atmosphere that permits of the free exchange of views.
As we begin to engage one another at this Conference, I would like to
believe that there are some basic propositions on which we would all agree.
Let me state some of these.
First: the practice of racism is both anti-human and constitutes a gross
violation of human rights.
Second: as it has been practised through the centuries, the black people
have been the victims of racism rather than the perpetrators.
Accordingly, what we have to deal with is white, anti-black racism, while
giving no quarter to any tendency towards black, anti-white racism, whether
actual or potential, as well as anti-semitism.
Third: racism is manifested in a variety of ways, these being the
ideological, existing in the world of ideas, and the socio-economic,
describing the social, political, economic and cultural power relations of
domination of and discrimination against the victims of racism.
Fourth: for many centuries racism has been a fundamental defining feature of
the relations between black and white, a directive principle informing the
structuring of these relations.
Fifth: the legacy of racism is so deeply entrenched that no country anywhere
in the world has succeeded to create a non-racial society.
Indeed, a deeply disturbing resurgence of racism and xenophobia constitutes
part of the current social and political reality in some of the developed
countries of the North.
These countries pride themselves, perhaps justifiably, as the home and
repository of the ideas and practice of human rights, democracy, equality
and human solidarity, and leaders whose example we should emulate.
Sixth: global experience stretching over a long period of time, demonstrates
that the creation of a constitutional and legal framework for the
suppression of racism is a necessary, but not a sufficient, condition to end
this violation of human rights.
Accordingly, a constitutional and legally guaranteed right to equality and
non-discrimination is very important in the fight against racism. Similarly,
the legal possibility and right to redress in case of such discrimination is
also critical.
At the same time, the creation of the socio-economic conditions enabling
such equality to be achieved is fundamental to the realisation of that
constitutional and legally guaranteed right to equality.
The American scholar Alan David Freeman has written that:
" The concept of 'racial discrimination' may be approached from the
perspective of either its victim or its perpetrator. From the victim's
perspective, racial discrimination describes those conditions of actual
social existence as a member of a perpetual underclass. This perspective
includes both the objective conditions of life (lack of jobs, lack of money,
lack of housing) and the consciousness associated with those objective
conditions ( lack of choice and lack of human individuality in being forever
perceived as a member of a group rather than as an individual.
" The perpetrator perspective sees racial discrimination not as conditions
but as actions, or series of actions, inflicted on the victim by the
perpetrator. The focus is more on what particular perpetrators have done or
are doing to some victims than on the overall life situation of the victim
class."
(Legitimising racial Discrimination through anti-discrimination law: A
critical review of Supreme Court doctrine).
Whatever else we may disagree about, I would hope that, at least, we would
agree about these propositions.
Let me address our own situation more directly. Once more, I would hope that
we would agree on most, if not all, the observations I will make.
Racism has been a fundamental organising principle in the relations between
black and white in our country, ever since Dutch immigrants settled at the
Cape of Good Hope.
As the dominant group in our country, the white minority worked to structure
all aspects of our national life consistent with the objective that the
whites should always remain the dominant group and the black majority, the
dominated.
Throughout this period of over three hundred years, this work, focused on
the deliberate construction of a racially divided society, was done
explicitly on the basis of a racist ideology, legitimised by its open and
consistent adoption as official state policy.
The destruction of the Nazi and Fascist regimes in the world was one of the
principal outcomes of the Second World War.
The apartheid system constituted a latter-day manifestation of the crime
against humanity that Nazism and fascism had imposed on the European, Asian
and wider world, more than a decade earlier.
Accordingly, as a country, bearing in mind the post-war process of
de-colonisation and the advances achieved as a result of the civil rights
struggle in the United States, we became the epicentre of the state-approved
ideas of racism, to which all humanity could legitimately attribute such
anti-human phenomena as racism and anti-semitism, slavery and colonialism.
Our own specific history has created a situation that constitutes a common
legacy and challenge.
The social and economic structure of our society is such that the
distribution of wealth, income, poverty, disease, land, skills, occupations,
intellectual resources and opportunities for personal advancement, as well
as the patterns of human settlement, are determined by the criteria of race
and colour.
An important part of this legacy is that the imposition of the ideology of
the dominant group has led to the weakening of the self-respect, pride and
sense of identity of the dominated.
This results in the incidence among some of the dominated of self-hate,
denial of identity and a tendency towards subservience to a definition of
themselves as would have been decided by the dominant power.
Clearly, it will take time for us to wipe out this legacy. The struggle
waged by the black majority against colonialism and apartheid, supported by
some principled white compatriots and the rest of the world, has, in the
first instance, been aimed at ending the relationship of
dominant-and-dominated, as between white and black, and achieving equality
among all South Africans, in all spheres of human life and activity.
However, the incorporation in our Constitution and national statutes of the
objective of the creation of a non-racial South Africa has placed an
obligation on our society as a whole to strive to achieve this outcome, as
an agreed national task that transcends all narrow partisan interests.
Our constitutional and legal framework and regime provide us with a strong
legal base to confront the scourge of racism. That base includes:
 our Constitution;
 international law, such as the Universal Declaration of Human
Rights and the International Convention for the Elimination of Racial
Discrimination;
 domestic legislation such as the Promotion of Equality and
Prevention of Unfair Discrimination as well as the Employment Equity Acts;
and,
 our jurisprudence, as represented, for instance, by the
Constitutional Court decision in the City Council of Pretoria v Walker
matter.
Our transition to a non-racial democracy in 1994 and the subsequent creation
of the constitutional and legal framework we have just described, have not
ended the inherited racist, discriminatory and inequitable divisions of our
country and people.
Despite our collective intentions, racism continues to be our common
bedfellow. All of us are therefore faced with the challenge to translate the
dream of a non-racial society into a reality.
Fortunately for all of us, we have the advantage that the overwhelming
majority of our citizens, whether we are white or black, or black or white,
we are South African and African.
Almost all of us do not have the option to uproot ourselves, to resettle
ourselves and our families in other, wealthier countries, happy to assume
another nationality and proud to denounce our former homeland, South Africa,
and continent, Africa, for their failures and brutalities.
Whatever the negatives we feel ourselves to be subject to, most of us take
the view that we should address such negatives, rather than respond to them
by packing our belongings and leaving.
Those of us who do not leave stay because we take the decision to fight for
the emergence of a society that would enable us and our children to lead
secure, comfortable and happy lives.
In a sense, this constitutes a prayer to the future. It also represents a
confident confirmation of our conviction that we are capable and willing to
participate in determining what that future will be.
Accordingly, what happens to South Africa, as a result of policies and
practices originating from the government and other decision-makers in our
society, is of direct concern to all our citizens.
This includes the most lowly and those most marginalised from the centres of
social power, regardless of race, colour, gender, age and geographic
location.
Consequently, what you will decide at this Conference is of the most
fundamental importance to the millions of South Africans whose interests all
of us in this hall claim to represent and speak for. I will therefore make
bold to advise - please bear in mind that we are a multi-racial and
multi-cultural society, born out of and conditioned by policies and
practices that sought to emphasise our differences as these racial and
cultural groups, rather than our commonalities as human beings who have
lived together for many long years.
We must also recognise this, that all of us are products of what the
intellectuals have described as a process of socialisation. Accordingly, all
of us are even conditioned to understand South Africa, our common home, in
different ways.
Even at this Conference, the apparently simple question - how would you
characterise present-day South Africa - will produce responses as varied as
the colours of the rainbow.
As we try to determine what is best for us as a people, our intelligentsia
will have to consider a wide variety of important matters. These include:
 the interconnections between the abstract and the empirical,
between the ideal and the actual;
 social organisation, scientific inquiry and the impact of property
relations on the integrity of the process of the expansion of the frontiers
of knowledge; and,
 empirical evidence that we are actually succeeding, or not, to end
the disparities that define some as the racially dominant and others as the
racially dominated.
As I have said, hopefully all of us present here can find it within our
possibility to agree also with these assertions about our own specific
reality.
Needless to say, we are also perfectly at liberty to disagree with any and
all of them.
Such an honest response is surely an inevitable and necessary part of the
kind of discussion we need, that will enable us, collectively, to confront
the challenge of racism.
All of us at this important Conference will have to answer the question -how
do we respond to all the general and specific propositions we have presented
to you, thus far!
This might very well include the response that all we have said constitutes
the most unadulterated rubbish that you have ever had the pain to listen to.
Naturally, the delegates are perfectly entitled to arrive at this
conclusion, having rationally argued that this is the only rational
conclusion that any reasonable person would reach.
Having heard the charges that the government acts in a manner that seeks to
intimidate those who differ with it, I would like to take this opportunity
to encourage all our people to break through the barrier of fear and to
speak their minds.
At the same time, they must understand that true intellectual discourse
presumes the vigorous contention of ideas.
By this we refer to the concept put forward at some time in the history of
China when, for better or for worse, the political establishment advanced
the slogan - let a hundred flowers bloom! let a hundred schools of thought
contend!
Given the difficult solutions we have to find to the hundreds of problems
that confront all of us, with none of us occupying a privileged position of
being the exclusive domicile of wisdom, we cannot but agree that, in our
instance as well, let a hundred schools of thought contend!
We speak here of a contention of ideas and not the reduction of ideas to
persons, such that intellectual debate is reduced to skirmishes, battles and
a war among individuals, however much any idea might be identified with a
particular individual.
I make these observations because I believe that as we discuss among
ourselves at this Conference, it will be important that we do not transform
our rejection of any views that might be expressed into hostility towards
the individuals who might express such views.
Whatever our protestations and our elevated views of ourselves, many of us
are still immersed in a learning process of how to handle open and vigorous
debate.
I would now like to request your indulgence to state what our Government
believes that we, as South Africans, can and should do to respond to the
common challenge of racism.
One of the critical national and international challenges that confront us
as a country and a people, is to succeed in the objective of creating a
truly non-racial society.
Many across the globe believe, with good reason, that because of our
specific history, we have the possibility and will make an important
contribution to the universal struggle to defeat the scourge of racism.
Whatever the problems we face today, our Government is convinced that, as a
people, we have the capacity to achieve this historic and epoch-making
objective.
We are convinced that as a people, both black and white, we have the wisdom,
ingenuity and sensitivity to the human condition that will drive and enable
us to overcome the demon of racism.
Correctly, much has been made by people around the world about the 'miracle'
of our transition from apartheid rule to a non-racial society.
At the heart of the sense of wonder and relief among the international
community was the fact that, contrary to many expectations, we avoided a
racial war, despite the racial brutality of the apartheid system and the
racial antagonisms it generated.
The international community responded with a similar sense of wonder and
admiration at the formation of, and the work done, by the Truth and
Reconciliation Commission, reinforced by the morality and humanism of that
outstanding son of our people, the Archbishop Desmond Tutu.
Unfortunately, we have not done the necessary work to assess what it was
that made it possible for the miracle to happen, being seemingly content
merely to bask in the universal praise.
But this we all know, that what we achieved was the product of conscious and
purposive human efforts and the outcome of the understanding by the millions
of our people that all of us, regardless of race and colour, are
interdependent members of a common neighbourhood.
It was the result of the effort expended over many years to entrench the
understanding among the millions of our people that black domination was as
evil as white domination.
I am convinced that precisely because we can rely on the same factors that
made our peaceful transition possible, we can say, with confidence, that we
will, indeed, defeat the demon of racism.
The first step we must take towards the realisation of this goal is the
common recognition by all of us, black and white, that racism exists and
that it is indeed a very serious problem, without whose solution it is idle
to speak of a new South Africa.
Secondly, we must abandon any notion that the problem of racism has nothing
to do with me and is the responsibility of another. We have to treat racism
as a problem that challenges the black people. We must treat racism as a
problem that challenges white people.
It is obvious that it makes no sense whatsoever to argue that the
responsibility to end racism resides with the victims of racism. Another
step we have to take is to make the common determination that, precisely
because this issue is so fundamental to our future, we have to ensure that
it is discussed frankly, freely and openly. We must be ready to take the
pain that will be an inevitable part of this open discourse.
None among us should seek to suppress this discussion. To suppress it is to
guarantee the perpetuation of racism, with the destructive consequences of
which all of us must surely be aware.
These requirements place a particular obligation on the white section of our
population, itself voluntarily to recognise the reality of racism, not to
propitiate any sense of guilt, but to make a contribution to the bright
future of our country which they legitimately expect.
It is not possible to over-emphasise this particular imperative, so central
is its place among the panoply of initiatives we must take in the common
struggle to end racism.
We will never succeed in the struggle against racism if the white section of
our population does not join with its black fellow-citizens in common effort
to transform ours into a non-racial society.
Naturally, I am aware of the justified feeling among many of our white
compatriots that they were not responsible for racism and apartheid.
Accordingly, they argue that they feel insulted when the crimes of the
apartheid system are blamed on them.
From this, it becomes an easy step to take to the conclusion that these
compatriots have no particular obligation to heal a wound they did not
cause.
Correct as this argument may be, nevertheless we have to respond to the
actual situation that faces us in this country.
This actual situation is that racism organised our society in such a manner
that the black oppressed could not possibly have a way of distinguishing
between those who elected to enforce a racist system, and those who were the
involuntary beneficiaries of racism.
Explained in other words, racism constitutes the practice of uniting people
on the basis of race, even by statute, as in our case, and presenting them
as a united entity relative to those who are the victims of racism. It is to
such a united entity that the victims of racism must necessarily respond.
In this context, we must also recognise the fact that throughout a very long
period of struggle against racism, very few of our white compatriots broke
ranks with the system of white minority rule to join the black millions who
were in rebellion against racist rule.
In this situation, it becomes easy to argue that - you may not have been
against us, which we only know from what you say, but you were not with us,
which we know because you were not with us in struggle!
It serves little purpose to take offence at a perceived attribution of guilt
and therefore to decide to take no responsibility to help solve the
challenges our country faces. In reality, such a position only serves to
make it more difficult to end racism in our society.
If I may I would like to refer briefly to what the distinguished President
of our Constitutional Court, Justice Arthur Chaskalson said last year when
he addressed the Congress of the Jewish Board of Deputies.
He says that by the time he entered the legal profession, discrimination and
humiliation of Jews in South Africa because of their religion "had ceased to
be a significant factor in our lives." He continues:
" Then, the dominant defining characteristic of our family, within the
broader context of South African society, was not our ethnic or religious
origins, but the fact that we were white. Because of that, we were entitled
to all the benefits then accorded by law to people who were white. We
prospered, as so many of the Jewish community did, not only because of our
work, but also because of the opportunities offered to us as whites. We were
no longer part of a marginalised group within society; we had become part of
a privileged group, and part of a society in which others were subjected on
a daily basis to the discrimination and humiliation which had been the lot
of so many of our ancestors."
As we engage the challenge of racism, it is also clear that we have to
address the seemingly two-sided phenomenon of 'white fears and black
expectations'.
Many within white society harbour fears that our country will slide into the
abyss, if it has not already begun that slide. They fear that they will be
the worst and perhaps the express victims of the impending catastrophe.
In her book, Country of My Skull, Antjie Krog says that General Constand
Viljoen told the Truth and Reconciliation Commission:
" The Afrikaner can in no way detach himself from the past. But we must be
allowed to make for ourselves an honourable role in the new dispensation.
The Afrikaner feels disempowered, unsafe, his language is threatened, his
educational structures are in pieces -in short, the Afrikaner feels flooded
by the majority and he has nowhere to turn."
In this situation, the many negative things that do happen in our country,
as they do in any other, are easily read as confirmation that the expected
dismal future is on its way.
It is in this context that even the discussion of racism, aimed at ending
racism, itself generates the fear that it will provoke black violence
against our white citizens.
Out of all this comes the advice - move gently with your transformation
processes lest you worsen white fears about the future!
For their part, the black people watch and wait in expectation that real
change will come sooner rather than later.
They, too, are fearful that sensitivity to the reality of white fears might
translate into insensitivity about their expectations speedily to end the
pain they have endured for centuries.
If white South Africa is fearful of the future because of what it might
lose, black South Africa looks forward to the future because of what it will
gain.
In the end, what it expects it will gain is, fully, its human dignity, based
on an end to poverty, ignorance and inequality, and based on the creation of
a society in which its blackness will no longer be a badge of subservience.
Out of all this comes the advice - move speedily with our transformation
processes lest we lose confidence in everything that has been said about,
democracy, non-racialism and national reconciliation!
Peter Rule, with Marilyn Aitken and Jenny van Dyk have written a biography
of Mrs Nokukhanya Luthuli, the wife of Chief A.J. Luthuli, entitled
Nokukhanya: Mother of Light. At the age of 90 years, they quote her
expressing this simple but profoundly humanist and African wish:
" My wish before I die, is to see blacks and whites living harmoniously in a
united South Africa."
To answer her prayer, we have no choice but to act together to address both
the fears and the expectations, without allowing that these fears are used
to perpetuate racism, without allowing that the justified expectations are
addressed in a manner that will create new crises.
The very act of getting together in pursuit of a common cause would both
reduce the fears and remove any confrontational attitude attaching to the
expectations.
It would surely confer a universal benefit if those who might despise and
fear others because of their race, our history and its legacy, no longer had
cause to do so; while those who might carry anger in their hearts against
others because of their race, our history and its legacy, also no longer had
cause to do so.
Thus shall we have a future of hope for the black and white children of our
country, to whom we must bequeath an adulthood as free of hate and fear as
they were free of hate and fear when they were born.
In the speech I have already cited, Judge Arthur Chaskalson says that what
is demanded of all South Africans is:
" That we commit ourselves completely and wholeheartedly to the
transformation that has to take place. This calls for more than pious
statements or resolutions at the end of a conference…(It means) seeking
solutions and not recrimination. Pragmatically (as the Jewish people) this
is what we have to do; ethically, this is what we are obliged to do, and in
good conscience we can do no less."
In 1967, a group of experts convened by UNESCO issued a "Statement on race
and racial prejudice". The statement begins with these words:
" All (human beings) are born free and equal both in dignity and in rights.
This universally proclaimed democratic principle stands in jeopardy wherever
political, economic, social and cultural inequalities affect human group
relations. A particularly striking obstacle to the recognition of equal
dignity for all is racism. Racism continues to haunt the world."
That world includes our own country.
You have convened here, distinguished South Africans and valued foreign
guests, to help our country answer the question - what shall we do to end
the nightmare!
This urgent question deserves an urgent answer.
Thank you.



_________________________________________________________________________
Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com.

Share information about yourself, create your own public profile at
http://profiles.msn.com.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

To unsubscribe/subscribe or view archives of postings, go to the Gambia-L
Web interface at: http://maelstrom.stjohns.edu/archives/gambia-l.html
You may also send subscription requests to [log in to unmask]
if you have problems accessing the web interface
----------------------------------------------------------------------------