Racism poisoning South Africa's Rainbow Nation
13 hours ago
JOHANNESBURG (AFP) — As new racist cracks appear in the veneer of South Africa's Rainbow Nation, analysts say the country was feeling the effects of papering over its differences instead of tackling them head-on.
Basking in the afterglow of a globally acclaimed transition from whites-only apartheid rule to democracy under black president Nelson Mandela, intolerant pockets continue to fester 14 years into democracy.
This week, simmering tensions were thrust into the spotlight when a video made by four white university students, in which they lead five black workers through a series of degrading mock-initiation activities, was made public.
The youths' work, condemned by parties across the political spectrum, was a protest against forced integration of black and white students in residences at the University of the Free State in what was once an independent Afrikaner republic.
Jody Kollapen, chairman of the Human Rights Commission established by the constitution, said this week Mandela took reconciliation too far -- to the detriment of true transformation.
"We have been living in a dream world ... believing we have overcome the most formidable of our obstacles ," Kollapen told AFP.
"We hadn't dealt with our past. Broader society never participated in a discussion about what the past meant for blacks and what the past meant for whites."
The video shows workers -- four women and a man -- downing beer, dancing and participating in mock rugby practice, after which they are made to kneel and eat meat on which one of the students was filmed urinating.
The home-made film ends with the words: "That, at the end of the day, is what we think of integration."
Arts and Culture minister Pallo Jordan told public radio the recording was "reprehensible, disgraceful" and had happened "despite the fact that these young people didn't live under apartheid. But they are deeply infected with racism."
In January, a 17-year-old white boy gunned down 10 black people at the Skielik informal settlement in the central North West province -- killing four including two children, in an apparent racist attack.
Last week, white reporters were outraged when they were barred from a gathering of the Black Journalists Forum which was addressed by ruling African National Congress (ANC) president Jacob Zuma.
On Wednesday, the South African Institute of Race Relations (SAIRR) research body said racial tensions appeared to have risen in the past month, threatening to undo years of progress.
Recent events, "probably set us back a significant amount of time", said the institute's deputy head Frans Cronje.
When the ANC unseated the racially oppressive apartheid state in 1994, Mandela and other leaders took hold of the phrase Rainbow Nation, coined by Nobel peace laureate Desmond Tutu to describe the country's multi-racial unity.
But fears are now being expressed that the racial harmony everyone had hoped would come with time is still far off.
"We always worked on the premise that if the older generation carried baggage from apartheid, then the consolation for the future was that younger children would not carry that same baggage," said Kollapen.
But as most blacks continue to be poor, many cast doubt on their white countrymen's commitment to real change.
And many whites, the majority of whom supported the transition, now felt they were the victims of reverse racism through the government's affirmative action and land redistribution policies.
"There are a very high percentage of whites who feel they are under siege," said Kollapen.
SAIRR president Sipho Seepe said dealing with racism had required more than simply removing the oppressive legislation of the past.
"We never addressed it. What is happening now was going to happen anywhere. It was going to boil over," he said.
"We failed to appreciate that racism is a way of life, ingrained in systems and structures and institutions."
Kollapen said what was lacking in South Africa was a heartfelt apology by whites, such as the one recently offered to Australian Aborigines by Prime Minister Kevin Rudd.
"For white people to understand the past requires them to apologise sincerely.
"We need an acknowledgement that the past was as bad as it was."
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