Everyone is a racist. I keep repeating that. Maybe I am a child of the Rainbow nation. Too many minutes of silence to celebrate peace, the white dove on the blue flag during the mid 90’s. I don’t really know racism. Not in the struggle sense. I know it in the post democratic sense, the subtle kind that made me draw a distinction between Afrikaners and English.
But as a person of colour do we excuse ineptitude, greed and corruption or the concerns about those with a “you’re a racist” card? See when Madiba cast his vote in 1994 people didnt stop being prejudice. White, Black, Indian and Coloured. Sure we all said wow look at those black faces, we are one, Simunye grooves but the reality is that we all went looking one way when we should have been looking another. At ourselves.
Because we should have been a bit more cautious as well as learnt to let go a bit. But post democracy it seemed we all rode in under the wooden horse that was democracy, hugging and celebrating and then we settled our own scores. Take the recent Eskom episode. Bobby Godsell declared a racist? The ANC and NUM come out in support of the former Eskom Chairman but you still have several forum holding up to the light of Racism? Do we not think that maybe appointing and Engineer to the position of CEO was a mistake? Maybe uncle Jacob is not cut out for the job?
I dont know. But I think that as people of colour we should use the race card where appropriate, because racism does exist. In the work place especially but we should learn to draw the distinction between valid concerns and plain prejudice.
Hamish
