Durban - Ethekwini councillor, Heinz de Boer, came in for stick from the panellists and audience at a social cohesion conference on Thursday.
He had challenged comments about “whiteness” by a panellist, Bishop Michael Vorster, at the three-day conference at the Durban International Convention Centre.
He dismissed Vorster’s reference to “white suburb” and took issue with blaming social ills and economic problems on one race group.
Earlier, other panellists had spoken about threats to social cohesion and whether a non-racial South Africa was an illusion.
De Boer told the conference that people needed to recognise where they came from, but there needed to be a focus on coming up with plans to address social cohesion issues.
“The comments made by the bishop are inflammatory. They do not add value to this conference. Where is a white suburb other than Orania?” he asked.
De Boer also said there was no “white suburb” and uMhlanga, where he was a councillor, was home to people of various racial groups, who co-existed peacefully.
He went on to say, as an example, that he too battled access to finance. “Would it be different if I had a different skin colour?” he asked.
He said the country needed meaningful change and those at the conference had to find solutions to the difficulties facing the country.
“We need to find solution without pointing fingers,” De Boer said.
But, one of the participants did not take kindly to De Boer’s remarks.
He accused De Boer of thinking he was superior on the strength of his skin colour.
“This is typical of white mentality where a black person is expected to respond as a garden boy.”
Panellist Eusebius McKaiser accused De Boer of not wanting to speak about the past because he had been advantaged compared with other race groups. He said although threats to social cohesion could be emotional and uncomfortable to some, they needed to be discussed.
McKaiser told De Boer that he was not speaking for black people by talking of peaceful co-existence in uMhlanga.
Siyabonga Madonsela, who said he was from uMhlanga, said: “He speaks total lies when he says there are no racial issues” in the affluent suburb.
Madonsela claimed someone was recently attacked by whites for walking from home to a garage at night.
Entering the fray, Dr Devi Rajab, said: “The majority suffered in a different way. Whites are victims because they can’t see what we experienced.”
De Boer said he had been under the impression the conference was about discussion, but he found himself under attack for airing his views.
“I was portrayed as a racist, as someone living in the past. Nobody knows my story,” he later told the Daily News.
Daily News