A race debate with a twist
Is the use of the apartheid-era racial classification system a human rights violation? The South African Human Rights Commission is grappling with this question after Western Cape teacher Glen Snyman was charged with fraud for identifying himself as “African” instead of “coloured” on a job application.
Sunday Times Daily — the daily digital edition of the Sunday Times — has explored the debate in a series of pieces by political commentator Ebrahim Harvey, Artscape CEO Marlene le Roux, University of the Free State historian Lindie Koorts and Sunday Times deputy editor Mike Siluma. Don’t miss the last instalment this week.
Also keep an eye out for our special report on schools in the Cape ganglands by Aron Hyman. His final feature, “How to turn a murderer into a family man”, will be published on our app and website www.timeslive.co.za/sunday-times-daily/ in the coming week.
You can download the app from the Google Play store or Apple’s App Store. It is free to all Sunday Times subscribers, bringing you daily news and analysis in a digital edition every weekday morning.
Some quotes from our editions last week: “The only difference is that it is the ANC, under a black majority government, doing today what the National Party did in the interests of the white minority under apartheid.” — Ebrahim Harvey
“As children we were oftenmade to work alongside our mothers or aunts … on the farms … It is important to understand how this fed into me identifying as black, because
I began to understand how apartheid reduced us all to nothing. It also showed the great divide between what I thought was my hardship as a coloured child and how that was amplified in black townships.” — Marlene le Roux
“By distancing myself from the Afrikaner nationalist past, was I not denying my own complicity? Even if I was too young to ever have voted for the National Party, I was, and still am, a beneficiary of its legacy.” — Lindie Koorts
“He wasn’t a naughty boy, man. It’s just that at some stage when you’re out there you get involved with maybe just one or two wrong people who lost their way and everyone just links you to that gang although you’re not part of that gang.” —