Those who live in countries that have oppressed other people tend, as a rule, to try to forget about it. Many British people (and some others) see the empire era as a glorious period in human history when the British brought civilisation and development to parts of the world that were still shrouded in barbarism.
They ignore how local societies and cultures were destroyed, genocides were perpetrated, and local people lost their land and their right to govern themselves — all to Britain’s substantial economic benefit.
Americans, too, seem to ignore the reality that their post-World War 2 international military forays have largely been unsuccessful, and led to extreme misery in the countries they invaded. In post-war Germany, many have tried to brush the horrors and atrocities of Nazi rule under the carpet.
But not us white South Africans, surely?
In the recent demonstration by some Afrikaners in support of US President Donald Trump outside the US embassy in Pretoria, the slogan was “Make SA Great Again”. The obvious question, of course, is which period do they consider was our golden age. Perhaps they mean the defeat of apartheid? Or the inauguration of our constitution, lauded internationally, as it was? Or the expansion of services since then? Or even when Tyla won the Grammy?
Unfortunately, probably not. In case there was any doubt, some placards at the Pretoria demonstration asked succinctly for a “White SA state like Israel”. In other words, a return to apartheid, with a white state and bantustans.
AfriForum and Solidarity complain about continued discrimination against whites, and Afrikaners, in particular. AfriForum refers to 141-plus race laws “on the books” now, which it says “comfortably earns [our government] the title of the most race-mad government in the world”.
Yet among the supposed 141-plus race laws, you will not find a law on racial classification, which was a central pillar of apartheid discrimination. The Population Registration Act of 1950, which classified people according to whether they were white, “native” or coloured (coloured defined as a person who wasn’t “a white person or a native”), provided for a board whose job it was to classify and reclassify people by racial group. The Population Registration Act was repealed, and we have no new law on our statute books that racially classifies South Africans.
What AfriForum misses is that our laws are designed to respond to our history and redress the imbalances of the past. Their list of race-mad laws omits our constitution, which recognises the injustices of the past in its preamble. The equality clause specifies that legislative or other measures may be taken to advance persons who were disadvantaged by unfair discrimination.
A right to property is protected, but that clause clarifies that no provision in the property clause “may impede the state from taking legislative and other measures to achieve land, water and related reform in order to redress the results of past discrimination”.
These provisions are there because of our history of white colonialists and their descendants seizing the land of the people, who were already living there; destroying indigenous cultures and societies; committing genocide with regard to the San and the Xhosa; prohibiting access to the country’s mineral wealth; destroying traditional economies; and forcing able-bodied men into the colonial economy through the imposition of taxes.
This was followed up by laws in the 20th century that further limited black people’s access to land and economic activity, and forcibly removed people from land they had lived on and even had colonial-era rights to. It included racially differentiated state expenditure — for example, in 1975 the SA government spent R42 on each black African pupil and R644 on each white pupil.
All this resulted in the SA we have today, where whites — about 8% of the population — own 72% of privately owned agricultural land, compared to black Africans, who are roughly 80% of the population and own just 4%. According to Stats SA, black Africans have a mean income of R25, 249 while whites have a mean income of R163,359.
You may, as a white person, not have lived in apartheid SA or have been born after 1994, but the historical racial divisions in SA still benefit you. Last year the unemployment rate for black Africans was more than 37%, but for whites it was less than 8%.
On April 27 1994, when the interim constitution came into effect, all South Africans might have been equal under the law, but white South Africans, because of their history, were far wealthier and capacitated than their black African compatriots.
‘A country of two nations’
There is a further irony in the call for Trump’s intervention. During the apartheid period the prime ministers and presidents of the time were vocal in condemning the UN and other countries’ rejection of apartheid, asserting that apartheid SA wanted no foreign interference. Now those who yearn for the apartheid past want the US to intervene.
The problem is that despite government efforts, racial disparities are still prevalent, and spatial apartheid is still the order of the day. We are still, as Thabo Mbeki said in 1998, a country of two nations — one white and largely prosperous, the other larger nation being black and poor. It cannot be good for SA’s long-term stability that poverty, unemployment and land ownership reflect huge racial disparities. It also denies our country the opportunity to reach its full potential.
The free market and equal opportunities for everyone will not address the severe problems of racial inequality caused by our colonial and apartheid past. We need the legislative and other measures that were designed to protect or advance persons or categories of persons who were disadvantaged by unfair discrimination and our constitution allows for.
We cannot just leave it up to the government either. We need, especially as white South Africans, to seriously examine what we can do, each one of us, to redress these imbalances of the past to truly make SA great.
• Jeffery is a former deputy justice & constitutional development minister and ANC MP.
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