Minister in the Presidency Trevor Manuel has branded Jimmy Manyi, spokesman for President Jacob Zuma and the ANC government, a racist “in the mould of HF Verwoerd”.
“I want to put it to you that your behaviour is of the worst-order racist,” Manuel said in an open letter following Manyi’s remarks about an “over-concentration of coloureds” in the Western Cape, which the ANC and others have denounced.
Manuel added: “I have a sense that your racism has infiltrated the highest echelons of government.”
As president of the Black Management Forum (BMF) and then director-general of the Labour Department, Manyi made the remarks in an interview with Freek Robinson on KykNet in March last year.
The interview made headlines when Solidarity posted it on YouTube last week as part of a campaign against proposed amendments to the Employment Equity Act.
“I want to put it to you that these statements would make you a racist in the mould of HF Verwoerd,” Manuel said.
“Mr Manyi, you may be black, or perhaps you aren’t, because you do not accept that label and would prefer to be ‘only a Xhosa’, whatever the label you choose, I want to put it to you that your behaviour is of the worst-order racist.
“I refer to you in this way because those of us who found our way into the struggle through the Black Consciousness Movement have always understood the origin of the Black Management Forum, as we have understood and supported the ANC documents that speak of ‘blacks in general, and Africans, in particular’. Regrettably, in your understanding the term ‘Black’ has quite a different meaning.
“As a consequence of your behaviour, people like me - in the ANC and in government, are being asked to explain what was in the minds of the drafters of the amendments to the Employment Equity Act.”
Manuel said Manyi, who later issued a statement through Government Communication and Information System (GCIS) deputy head Vusi Mona, “lacked the moral conviction to publicly apologise”.
“The fact that Mona had to issue a statement is beyond comprehension since you distinctly did not utter those racist sentiments as an official of the GCIS,” Manuel wrote. “Secondly, that you lack the moral conviction to publicly apologise says so much about your acute lack of judgment.
“Thirdly, that the statement apologises only for the fact that ‘some people may have taken offence’ says to me that you clearly fail to appreciate the extent to which your utterances are both unconstitutional and morally reprehensible. These ‘things’, in your view, ‘the coloureds who are over-concentrated in the Western Cape’, are the sons and daughters of those who waged the first anti-colonial battles against the Portuguese, the Dutch and the British when they set foot on our shores.
“These ‘things’, which so irritate you, include many who made huge sacrifices in the struggle … at a time when people with views like Jimmy Manyi were conspicuous by their absence from the misery of exile, the battles at the barricades and apartheid’s jails.
“By the way, what did YOU do in the war, Jimmy?”
Manuel said he would ensure that Parliament acted “in the letter and spirit of our constitution” when it adopted amendments to the act. “I have never waged any battle from the premise of an epithet that apartheid sought to attach to me but I will do battle against the harm you seek to inflict … not as a coloured, but as a non-racist determined to ensure that our great movement and our constitution are not diluted through the actions of racists like you.
“I now know who Nelson Mandela was talking about when he said in the dock that he had fought against white domination and that he had fought against black domination. Jimmy, he was talking about fighting against people like you.”
Asked for comment last night, Manyi said he was in a meeting and could not respond. - Cape Times