Racism still common
SIR — “The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he doesn't exist.” — Charles Baudelaire. I see a resemblance with this Baudelaire quote in what is happening in SA today. Many media pundits and political figures would have South Africans believe that our history is merely a matter of the past. They would have you believe that apartheid was overcome and that it was a failure.
On the contrary, apartheid was a roaring success, especially if you measure it in accordance to what it was intended to achieve. It was economic ideology that intended to favour a section of the South African population. Of course, its subsequent by-product was deeply internalised racism.
Eighteen years after the supposed fall of apartheid, its many benefactors still enjoy economic favour and that racist attitude has become so deeply engrained in people’s psyche that I doubt many people think of themselves as racist.
The so-called defenders of social justice (the media) have perpetuated the idea of the race card, along with the silly term “born free”. The race card is a label bestowed on any person who thinks something is racist, because ultimately they believe racism no longer exists. I probably stand a high chance of losing the hard-earned endorsement of correspondent R Myburgh, but I believe now more than ever that racism is rife in SA. I just think white South Africans don’t get it, or least those who view our future as being removed from our past. We are products of a highly conflicted past. And South Africans who compare The Spear saga to the Canadian prime minister art scandal just don’t get it.
Our past should not paralyse us, but it should necessitate greater levels of sensitivity about contentious issues. The quote I started this letter with underlines a critical fact that I need to make — the benefit of the devil of hiding his existence is to allow people to drop their guard, just as the ridiculous insistence that racism doesn’t exist allows for South Africans to drop their guard, to become insensitive and to re-label racism under new masks, such as freedom of expression and open societies.
For SAto be truly nonracial we must all make a concerted effort to deracialise the developing economy and take greater responsibility in our conduct towards different races. We should prioritise that over freedom of expression and so forth.