Cape Town - Reparations to victims of apartheid and the institution of a wealth tax would have gone a long way to reconciling South Africans, Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu said on Sunday.
But a lack of political will had led to the failing of Nelson Mandela’s reconciliation project.
Tutu condemned three separate racist incidents in a statement he sent out over the weekend.
“Those responsible for the recent spate of racist incidents reported to police in Cape Town, the xenophobia-fuelled violence in Soweto and the anti-Semitism emanating from the Durban University of Technology are spitting in the face of non-racialism and undermining a key foundation stone of our democracy,” Tutu said.
“That they could behave so despicably just one generation after our liberation from apartheid, as we commemorate the 25th anniversary of Nelson Mandela’s release from prison, is an indictment on the progress we have made in healing the scars of our past.”
Tutu said that reconciliation was at the heart of Mandela’s plan for a unified country, and that the entire nation was guilty of failing to follow through on it.
One of the mechanisms put in place to ensure nation-building was the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC).
“While the TRC was not intended to settle the scourges of disunity and inequity on its own, I believe that lack of political will to follow through on the recommendations contained in the commission’s final report had the effect of slamming the brakes on our reconciliation and healing project,” Tutu said. “We would have made significantly more progress down reconciliation road had our post-Mandela government heeded the TRC’s basket of recommendations (including reparations and the institution of a wealth tax), and had it held to account perpetrators of injustice.”
Tutu said that the anti-Semitism exhibited by the Durban University for Technology’s Student Representative Council when it called for the expulsion of Jewish students was not limited to that university. Similarly, he said, xenophobia was not only Soweto’s problem, and neither were racially bigoted people exclusive to Cape Town.
Tutu said these challenges permeated society, and called for a complex and sustainable response.
“We have said many times that reconciliation is a process; it is not an event. It is a process that begins within, in our hearts, questioning our own prejudices. Then it ripples outward, through our family to the community and broader society. The TRC was a beginning, and not an end.
“We should condemn racism wherever it is encountered. But we should understand that condemnation on its own inevitably deepens mistrust and division. What we need to do is recommit ourselves to re-building. To understanding that human beings are inter-dependent; that we function optimally when swimming in the same direction, together.”
Cape Argus