ADDRESS BY PREMIER
Programme Directors
Minister Geraldine Fraser-Moleketi
Members of the Provincial Executive Council
Dr Barney Pityana
Mr. Willie Madisha
Mayors and Councillors
Distinguished guests
Ladies and gentlemen.
It is strange, as the late Steve Biko said many years ago, that we should be sitting here today to talk about a problem we did not create.
But then I believe you will agree with me when I say racism is still a defining feature of South African society and continues to haunt all facets of our lives.
It rears its ugly head in our health services, our schools; our churches; our factories; our police services; our areas of abode – in fact everywhere. And this happens seven years into our democracy
It makes one wonder what happened to the pledge we made in Kliptown on 26 June 1955 that all national groups must be protected by law against insults to their race and national pride.
The bottom-line, ladies and gentlemen, is that the practice of racism is both anti-human and constitutes a gross violation of human rights .
There are those amongst us who want to believe that racism started with the advent of National Party rule in 1948. That is not true. 1948 only legitimised what had been practiced for years. And they shamelessly used the Bible to justify it.
In 1843 Anna Steenkamp, niece of Voortrekker leader Piet Retief wrote:
“The shameful and unjust proceedings with the reference to the freedom of our slaves; and yet it is not so much their freedom which drove us to such lengths as their being placed on an equal footing with Christians, contrary to the laws of God, and the natural distinction pf race and colour, so that it was intolerable for any decent Christian to bow beneath such a yoke; wherefore we rather withdrew in order to preserve our doctrines in purity”.
Can you beat that?
Having concluded that black people are inferior they then had to justify why we could not look after our own affairs.
In a soon-to-be-published book called A Marriage made in Heaven , co-authored by Kgalema Mothlanthe; Housing Minister Sankie Mahanyele; Smuts Ngonyama and Dumisane Makhaye the then British High Commissioner to South Africa Sir Alfred Milner is quoted as saying:
“One of the strongest arguments why the White man must rule is because that is the only possible means of raising the black man, not to our level of civilisation – which it is doubtful whether he would ever attain – but to a much higher level than that which he at present occupies”.
It is therefore not difficult to understand why some white people, especially on the farms and rural areas, despise black people. They do so because they believe that black people are inferior”.
German philosopher Immanuel Kant argued that humans are differentiated from other things like animals by their ability to think. Human beings, Kant said, were distinguishable by their ability to reason and determine the direction of the world.
Kant said blacks could be educated, but only as servants. But as Dumisani Hlophe argues, the kind of education and training that Kant had in mind had nothing to do with matters such as science and mathematics.
Kant believed blacks lacked the capacity to think. Another western philosopher, David Hume, said “(The) Negro (black) was naturally inferior to the white”.
Many other western philosophers have drawn theories to this effect. These deep-rooted racist philosophies have for centuries guided white people in their relations and interaction with African people.
They have served as the bedrock of missionary work in Africa and provided the bedrock for imperialists and colonialists about how to handle Africans.
Blacks have never, in western eyes, been seen as full human but rather as “half devil and half child”, as noted by writer / poet Rudyard Kipling.
So, you see our problem is a deep-seated one and it is not only a problem we alone face as a young democracy. You may differ with me, but I think nowhere in our province are human rights trampled on such a large scale as on the farms. And high incidences of reported racial discrimination and racism in the province are found in the farming communities.
This could be attributed to the fact that Mpumalanga is largely rural and most of its inhabitants are concentrated in areas characterized by high levels poverty, unemployment and illiteracy.
Apparently the discourse on racism in the province is two-fold. For example in an article in a Sunday paper the following remarks were documented:
“It can only happen in Mpumalanga where there seems to be one law for blacks and another for whites”.
This implies that there is an unequal treatment of cases pertaining to racism. It therefore goes without saying that even the punitive measures relating to racial intolerance differ.
Racial identities and cultural stereotypes are still used as excuses for perpetuating racism. White farmers are depicted as cruel and they in turn regard blacks as people who are “anti-white” eager for revenge. We need to deal with these stereotypes.
I believe that this conference today will finally make all of us – black and white – accept that racism exists and that it is a very serious problem, without whose solution it is idle to speak of a new South Africa.
Maybe this conference will help us in abandoning any notion that the problem of racism, particularly on the farms, 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 makes no sense whatsoever to argue that the responsibility to end racism on the farms, as well as attacks on farmers resides with the victims of racism and farmers.
I expect this conference to give clear guidelines on how to deal with racism wherever it rears its head. Be it in schools, hospitals, clinics, and churches or on the farms.
That is why I wish you success in your deliberations.
I thank you.
Rereferences
Motlanthe et al: Marriage made in Heaven
Steve Biko black Consciousness. The quest for Humanity
Dumisani Hlophe's writing in City Press