JOHANNESBURG - Former President Nelson Mandela’s efforts to promote a non-racial society have been marred by the ANC’s failure to prevent scathing racial public slurs, according to the CEO of the South African Institute of Race Relations, Frans Cronje.
Speaking to The Citizen yesterday, Cronje said in 1994 Mandela and other leaders had succeeded in bringing various factions out of their racial “comfort zones”.
“What we are now seeing is people going back to what Mandela brought them out of,” he said, adding that the current racial tensions in the country had reached a serious level of concern.
Comments by Cronje come in the wake of the murder of Afrikaner Weerstandsbeweging (AWB) leader Eugene Terre’Blanche.
At the weekend President Jacob Zuma and leaders of political parties called for calm while members of the AWB collectively blamed the continuous singing of Shoot the boer for the murder of their leader.
In a statement, Cronje further said that the ANC’s exhortations to violence had created a context where the killings of white people would see a degree of suspicion falling around the party and its supporters.
“It is of concern, therefore, that the police’s senior management are on record as saying that they will not consider a political motive or partial motive for the killing of Terre’Blanche.
“This suggests an early effort to cover up the ANC’s possible culpability for inciting the crime.”
Meanwhile, more mixed reaction on Terre’Blanche’s death has continued to pour in.
Democratic Alliance leader Helen Zille yesterday said Terre’Blanche’s murder had unleashed a “tidal wave of pent-up rage and frustration” in certain sections of SA society.
She further pointed out that the ANC’s view that there is no link between its struggle song sang by ANC Youth League president Julius Malema and Terre’Blanche’s murder, was unhelpful.
“We must acknowledge the fact that songs inciting people to kill others creates a climate in which murder is legitimised and romanticised. We must understand why people are angered and alienated by a song that calls for their murder.”
Congress of the People’s Ndzipho Kalipa said the party welcomed the undertaking by AWB members not to avenge the death of their leader.
“Racist statements and slurs can only polarise our community and we hope that the AWB is sincere in its statement,” Kalipa said, adding the murder had necessitated that the country’s Labour Relations Act be transformed.
NONI MOKATI, The citizen, 06/04/10
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