We are all human....

 

I have been alarmed by reports on racism in the past few weeks.                                                                  

The timing of the race debate or should I say the “swart gavaar propaganda” against coloureds and other racial comments comes at a time when the nation is preparing itself for local elections. The racism stories in the news somehow made me think of whether as a nation, a so called “rainbow nation” have we completely changed to accept one another despite our colour differences. Do we judge people based on their deeds or do we judge them based on their skin colour. 

Our country comes from a time where people of all races were taught to dislike each other, because people of different colour were viewed as inferiors.  Former late President F.W Botha once said, “We do not pretend like other Whites that we like Blacks. The fact that, Blacks look like human beings and act like human beings do not necessarily make them sensible human beings. Hedgehogs are not porcupines and lizards are not crocodiles simply because they look alike. If God wanted us to be equal to the Blacks, he would have created us all of a uniform colour and intellect.”

I questioned myself have we moved on as South Africans 17 years after democracy to not think in this outrageous way. Recently Steve Hofmeyr made racist comments about blacks, Kuli Roberts and Jimmy Manyi’s comments on coloureds clearly tells me that we are not there yet. South African’s have not completely washed out the Apartheid ideology of a master and slave to a certain percentage each and everyone of us are racist. We might not be consciously aware of some racist statements or acts we do, but deep in us still lays some elements of racism.

As South Africans we need to unify against racism, we need to heal together and speak to one another to iron out these prejudices that are a result of our history. The media has an important role to play in ensuring that as a developing country we progress in the way we think. I don’t think the media is playing the vital role of being a mediator of our thoughts and knowledge, instead some of the reports I’ve seen lately are fueling racial divides.

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