Beware the race card

ON MONDAY, Mzwandile Masina sent an unequivocal warning to white South Africans and Save SA that things were about to get ‘very rough’. “We will crush any individual who stands in the way of nation building and social cohesion in South Africa,” he said.

Masina, the executive mayor of Ekurhuleni, was delivering the opening address at the annual commemoration of freedom fighting icon Chris Hani’s assassination. He was referring directly to the wave of popular protests that spread across South Africa last Friday, which obviously shocked a certain faction of the ruling African National Congress to the core.

He wasn’t the only politician that day at that event to resort to the race card. President Jacob Zuma did the same later on. It’s a dangerous gambit. We have seen what happens when societies are not just allowed to hate, but encouraged to hate. Swart gevaar (the black peril) became interchangeable with the rooi gevaar (red [communist] peril) under successive apartheid presidents, now we have seen the emergence of wit gevaar (white peril) in the bitterest of ironies under an administration that boasted the proudest liberation and most progressive credentials on the continent. Out of the same faction comes the trumpeting of white monopoly capital, with a DNA that can be directly linked to the blind prejudice of the anti-semitic Hoggenheimer cartoons of the 1930s.

We all know what racism is. We all know that it must be outlawed at every step. Masina’s comments in the current racially charged environment in our country are regrettable and reckless, no matter how strongly he felt. Leaders of our society should, at all times, be at the forefront of fighting racism and must not allow their political interests to blind them to the reality – and dangers – of racial tensions in the country.

Yesterday’s march to the Union Buildings showed no racial divide. Thousands of South Africans from all political parties, exercised their constitutional right to protest against the presidency of Zuma. This was not the act of racists or mafikizolo, but committed citizens reforging the nationhood we have sought ever since Desmond Tutu shared his dream of the Rainbow Nation.