TARA ROOS | Non-racialism is the destination, not the starting point

South Africans love talking about non-racialism. We bring it up whenever employment equity is discussed, whenever transformation policies are challenged and whenever another debate erupts over race. The principle is admirable: people should be judged by their ability, not the colour of their skin. In an ideal society, I would agree. But South Africa is not an ideal society.

It remains a country shaped by one of the most extreme systems of racial exclusion in history and ignoring that history does not erase its consequences. Take a simple example. Imagine a company whose board is made up of 50% black executives and 50% white executives. Many would describe that as equal representation. It is not.

According to Stats SA’s 2022 Census, black Africans make up 81.4% of the population. When all historically disadvantaged racial groups are included, that number rises to about 92%. White South Africans account for just 7.3%. A board split evenly between black and white executives would therefore give a group representing fewer than one in 14 South Africans half the seats at the table. That is not demographic equality. It is overrepresentation, rooted in apartheid’s legacy.

Too often we speak as though 1994 reset the country to zero. It did not. Apartheid was not simply a political system; it was an economic project designed to enrich white South Africans while systematically excluding black South Africans from wealth creation.

For decades, white South Africans benefited from reserved skilled jobs, better schools and universities, superior infrastructure, easier access to finance, property ownership and business opportunities. Meanwhile, black South Africans were dispossessed of land, subjected to pass laws, denied quality education through Bantu Education and prevented from building generational wealth. Democracy changed the law, but it did not redistribute decades of accumulated advantage.

Apartheid was not simply a political system; it was an economic project designed to enrich white South Africans while systematically excluding black South Africans from wealth creation.

Wealth does not disappear when legislation changes. Homes, businesses, investments and professional networks are passed from one generation to the next. Better schools produce better graduates, who secure better jobs and create more wealth for their children. The advantages of apartheid compounded over generations, as did its disadvantages.

This does not mean every white South African is wealthy or every black South African is poor. Individual circumstances differ. But policy can’t be built around exceptions. It must respond to structural realities.

And the structural reality is that apartheid gave white South Africans a substantial economic head start that can’t simply be erased by declaring everyone equal before the law. Those realities explain why calls for a non-racial South Africa often miss the point. You cannot spend centuries constructing inequality and expect three decades of democracy to erase it through good intentions alone.

Non-racialism should mean building a society in which race no longer determines opportunity. But South Africa has not yet reached that point. Transformation is therefore not about excluding white South Africans or punishing them for the past. It is about addressing inequalities deliberately engineered under apartheid and still reflected in economic outcomes now.

The question is why representation is so often measured from the perspective of including the minority that makes up just 7.3% of the population. Non-racialism remains a worthy aspiration. But aspirations cannot erase history. And history continues to shape South Africa far more than many are willing to admit.

• Roos is Business Day parliamentary reporter.