Prometheus 6   

Economic Democracy Breeds Non-Racialism
Mail & Guardian (Johannesburg)
OPINION
August 7, 2003
By Herman Wasserman

…While we can refute the scientific concept of "race" as much as we like, the material experience of racism in South Africa is still everywhere to be seen. While we can deny the concept of race as a myth, the discrimination on the basis of that myth in the apartheid system wrought effects that are undeniably still lived today. In a society structured along these lines, it is not surprising to find that race is still a powerful signifier.

This is why, as recently pointed out by political scientist Amanda Gouws and quoted by Mbeki, the concept of reconciliation between races would have to take place not only on attitudinal, but on grassroots level as well.

Of course we want to get away from defining ourselves in terms of the categories set by apartheid. Of course we want, someday, to be a non-racial society in which identity is based on other determinants than skin colour and essentialist notions of racial origin.

In some ways this is already happening. In the embryonic cross-cultural forays in art forms like kwaito, hip-hop, the emergence of post-apartheid literature and theatre and homegrown soapies, new forms of identity are being experimented with. But identity and cultural transformation cannot be divorced from material factors and historical legacies. Material factors mitigate against new identities coming into being, since cross-cultural movement is hampered by the structural divisions in South African society. Geographically, socially, culturally, South Africa is still divided along racial lines. Race might not be the overriding issue in post-1994 South Africa, since formal apartheid legislation has been scrapped. However, race is important insofar as it points to the extent to which material inequalities still remain in our society, and how that precludes greater social and cultural changes from taking place.

Census 2001 has shown us that race and class still coincide in South African society, almost 10 years after the formal end of apartheid. It is important that "playing the race card" should not be a way of escaping criticism or denying interlocutors a position from where to constructively engage in a dialogue to change things for the better. But race as a determinant in South African society cannot be wished away. While it should inform the approach to redressing material inequalities, this should not be restricted to changing faces in boardrooms - it should also take the form of a restructuring on ground level, so that the legacies of the past may someday be erased. Only by changing material circumstances in the country will we be able to change the ways we experience each other and define ourselves as South Africans. Only then will we be able to shape new identities without being encumbered by the ghosts of the past.