South Africa cannot expect to turn around 350 years of oppression in 17 years, the government's chief spokesman Jimmy Manyi said on Thursday.
“Seventeen years will never be enough. Do you understand what it is to turn around 350 years of deprivation?” he asked a Tomorrow's Leaders convention in Sandton.
Manyi compared transformation to the lifecycle of a butterfly, and said that what was needed was fundamental change from the beginning of the cycle to the end.
He mentioned the recent outcry over comments he made about there being too many coloured people in the Western Cape.
He also had a go at television journalist Deborah Patta for criticising him for not apologising himself, but having government communications deputy CEO Vusi Mona apologise on his behalf.
“What is she saying? The African way of apologising is not acceptable?
“When you have offended as an African, you send a delegation to apologise for you.
“Patta said it's not good enough. I have to do it the Western way,” Manyi said.
South Africans needed to respect each other's cultures and learn to co-exist, he said.
“When we have arrived at the rainbow status of our nation we would not have dispensed with our diversity.”
Manyi said he liked the Afrikaans phrase “regstellende aksie” for affirmative action.
“If something must be put right, it means there is something wrong with that thing,” he said. - Sapa