South Africa
"No more talk shops against racism"

afrol.com, 2 September - Opening the South African National Conference on Racism, S.A. Minister of education, Kader Asmal, promised this would not be just another "talk shop" against racism, as some detractors already had announced in the press. "We stand in the midst of the unfolding of a new and extraordinary experiment in democracy and non-racialism."

Just a year before the opening of before the third United Nations Conference on Racism to be held in Durban, the National Conference is to prepare the way. 

- At that conference next year we must also avoid the reduction of events into a talk shop; we must put flesh on the bones of the Declaration on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, Minister Asmal said. Because of our transitional miracle, which was the product of hard slog rather than mere magic, our President and our country are the best placed in the world to introduce issues of racial equity onto the global agenda, as we are already doing in global financial and trade organisations, for instance. 

- But before we take concrete action on the international stage, we need clarity and resolve on the national one, Asmal said. We are therefore here for action, not for talk. We are not here merely to express racial grievance; merely to celebrate blackness or to berate whites-as various media stereotypes have suggested. We have the political will and democratic mandate to launch an African reconstruction as far-reaching as - but also more enduring than - the American Reconstruction after the nineteenth century Civil War, which relapsed into American apartheid or Jim Crow. 

On this score South African history now differs fundamentally from the American history from which useful analogies may nevertheless be drawn. Those who question the importance of this conference and the government's attentiveness to your deliberations, those who say we are here merely to make a fruitless noise about racism, should reflect on what Professor Patricia Williams, who spoke so eloquently yesterday, wrote in what is already a classic work, The Alchemy of Race and Rights: 

For American blacks, describing needs has been a dismal failure as a political activity. It has succeeded only as a literary achievement. The history of our need is certainly moving enough to have been called poetry, oratory, epic entertainment-but it has never been treated by white institutions as a statement of political priority . . . Some of our greatest politicians have been forced to become priests or blues singers. Even white descriptions of 'the blues' tend to remove the daily hunger and hurt from need and abstract it into a mood. And whoever would legislate against depression? Particularly something as rich, soulful, and sonorously productive as black depression.

But it is different in South Africa. In South Africa now, black are able to decide the democratic agenda, as the President noted. Political and institutional power in South Africa, unlike other countries who have not really grappled with the scourge of racism, is no longer white-dominated. This conference is supposed to be a part of the process that will entrench the priority of black needs, not only expectations, but also needs as Professor William's describes. We are putting on our political institutions and culture the stamp of the continuing needs of the black oppressed, Asmal said. 

South African Minister of Education,  Kader Asmal

There has been an extremely busy Parliament since 1994, undoing all manner of discriminatory apartheid legislation. The centrepiece of this is the 1996 Constitution. We tried to get right what had gone wrong elsewhere, notably in the United States, Asmal commented on the process. Thus our constitution sets itself against both "direct" and "indirect" discrimination, thus precluding the fraudulent rhetoric of "reverse discrimination" that has made so much headway in the United States. The political rhetoric of reverse discrimination certainly remains prominent in South African politics among those who seek to play on white fears for their own political gain and vanity, according to Asmal. "But because of our democratic mandate we as government and as the leading architects of the Constitution were able to ensure that this divisive rhetoric is not taken seriously in our fundamental legislative strategies."

Out of the Constitution other values and legislation also flow. There have been racially equitable reforms in all areas of law and policy, from welfare to taxes, from education to policing, from housing to land and water reform. Asmal espacially focused on one piece of legislation that is of general importance and had passed into law relatively recently: the Promotion of Equality and Prevention of Unfair Discrimination Act ("the Act") which was gazetted on February 9, 2000, a piece of legislation mandated by the Constitution and promulgated by the President today.

The preamble to the Act notes that "although significant progress has been made in restructuring and transforming our society and its institutions, systemic inequalities and unfair discrimination remain deeply embedded in social structures, practices and attitudes, undermining the aspirations of our constitutional democracy." And the Act sets out to deal comprehensively with that problem. The Act is fundamentally premised, as its Guiding Principles set out in section 4 confirm, on the recognition of "the existence of systemic discrimination and inequalities, particularly in respect of race, gender and disability in all spheres of life as a result of past and present discrimination brought about by colonialism, the apartheid system and patriarchy." 

The Act places upon the state a duty and responsibility to promote and achieve equality (s24(1)), a which is a historic reversal of the apartheid state's deliberate manufacture of racial inequality over decades. In addition, by section 24(2), all persons have a duty and responsibility to promote equality. This means that the private sector has no privacy from the imperatives of dealing with our legacy, from which apartheid-era businesses benefited. 

The Act gives the Human Rights Commission, the convenor of this Conference, as well as any other relevant constitutional institutions, the right to request any state institution or private person to provide information on any measures relating to the achievement of equality, including information relating to compliance with relevant legislation, codes of practice and programmes.

In the four months since its promulgation, the implementation of the Act has in fact been somewhat delayed because of administrative hitches-which illustrates my point that all governance is administration. But one part of the impact of this conference, in which these implementation difficulties have been highlighted and criticised, is that the government will have to move speedily on resolving them.

The Act ensures that no area of governance escapes the priorities of reconstruction and the move away from racial discrimination. Every Minister is mandated and required by law to implement within their portfolios measures aimed at the achievement of equality by:

* Eliminating any form of unfair discrimination or the perpetuation of inequality in any law, policy or practice for which that Minister is responsible; and
* Preparing and implementing equality plans in the prescribed manner. 

These plans must include time frames for their implementation and these time frames must be determined in consultation with the Finance Minister: so these plans are not mere rhetoric cooked up in isolation from resource and other constraints, Asmal emphasized in his speech. When approved and adopted, they will in fact be implementable and implemented. This is governance, not mere rhetoric or pie in the sky, he concluded. 

The Government is committed to the full implementation of the legislation including the strengthening of bodies involved in combating racism. Asmal considers the establishment of the Equality Review Committee to be enormously important as it will identify practice which in a sense South Africa has limited international comparative experience to aid. There is no society on earth, not even the United States where the phenomenon of racism has been as much an integral part of the everyday life of a people, that has permeated all levels of a people's being and self-perception as it has been in South Africa.

Government has adopted constitutional and legislative mechanisms as part of the process of combating racism. Yet, because racism has engulfed the entire existence of people, over a long period of time, it is not possible to erase it merely by adopting a non-racial constitution, however important this is, nor by declaring ourselves non-racial. Thus, there will be a need for conferences like this in future as well to keep consciousness alive on this important issue.

Source: South African Ministry of Education

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