SA looks hopeless if you insist on examining it through a racial prism
APPROACH WITH CAUTION
SA looks hopeless if you insist on examining it through a racial prism
Apartheid's inequalities and patterns of power have been reproduced by African nationalists, and coloured people are increasingly expressing their displeasure. Ignoring them is not the answer, writes ISMAIL LAGARDIEN.
OVER the last couple of years there have been light flutters of “coloured” politics: the politics of South Africans whom the earliest European colonists, then Afrikaner and now African nationalists, classified as second or third-class citizens. The issue seems to be arising in coloured communities up and down the country. See here (https://www.news24.com/citypress/voices/westbury-has-no-coloured-problem-20181012), here (https://ewn.co.za/2018/09/28/westbury-residents-accuse-govt-of-wanting-to-get-rid-of-coloured-population?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter), here (https://www.iol.co.za/news/nathaniel-julies-state-doing-all-in-its-power-to-let-coloured-people-die-says-protester-b94eca96-f175-4b15-956a-1bfdf9ef4dc2) and here (https://www.702.co.za/articles/468152/westbury-residents-call-for-solutions-to-reduce-unemployment-crime-in-the-area).
A general belief among coloured people, away from the intellectual and scholarly guff, is that the government cares naught for their comfort. Said one resident of Westbury (https://ewn.co.za/2018/09/28/westbury-residents-accuse-govt-of-wanting-to-get-rid-of-coloured-population?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter), formerly a coloured township outside Johannesburg, about swirling violence, widening fractures and breakdown: “The government knows what is going on. Our people are dying on a daily basis and they’re doing absolutely nothing because they want to get rid of the coloured population.”
Another Westbury resident, Melissa Davids, told the inscrutable Panyaza Lesufi (https://www.702.co.za/articles/468152/westbury-residents-call-for-solutions-to-reduce-unemployment-crime-in-the-area) (he who is constantly in search of ethnic purity and erasure of anything “non-African”) the coloured community was being excluded from services and protection, and reminded him: “It was not only Nelson Mandela – Ashley Kriel also fought during the apartheid era.”..
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APPROACH WITH CAUTION
SA looks hopeless if you insist on examining it through a racial prism
Apartheid's inequalities and patterns of power have been reproduced by African nationalists, and coloured people are increasingly expressing their displeasure. Ignoring them is not the answer, writes ISMAIL LAGARDIEN.
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OVER the last couple of years there have been light flutters of “coloured” politics: the politics of South Africans whom the earliest European colonists, then Afrikaner and now African nationalists, classified as second or third-class citizens. The issue seems to be arising in coloured communities up and down the country. See here (https://www.news24.com/citypress/voices/westbury-has-no-coloured-problem-20181012), here (https://ewn.co.za/2018/09/28/westbury-residents-accuse-govt-of-wanting-to-get-rid-of-coloured-population?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter), here (https://www.iol.co.za/news/nathaniel-julies-state-doing-all-in-its-power-to-let-coloured-people-die-says-protester-b94eca96-f175-4b15-956a-1bfdf9ef4dc2) and here (https://www.702.co.za/articles/468152/westbury-residents-call-for-solutions-to-reduce-unemployment-crime-in-the-area).
A general belief among coloured people, away from the intellectual and scholarly guff, is that the government cares naught for their comfort. Said one resident of Westbury (https://ewn.co.za/2018/09/28/westbury-residents-accuse-govt-of-wanting-to-get-rid-of-coloured-population?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter), formerly a coloured township outside Johannesburg, about swirling violence, widening fractures and breakdown: “The government knows what is going on. Our people are dying on a daily basis and they’re doing absolutely nothing because they want to get rid of the coloured population.”
Another Westbury resident, Melissa Davids, told the inscrutable Panyaza Lesufi (https://www.702.co.za/articles/468152/westbury-residents-call-for-solutions-to-reduce-unemployment-crime-in-the-area) (he who is constantly in search of ethnic purity and erasure of anything “non-African”) the coloured community was being excluded from services and protection, and reminded him: “It was not only Nelson Mandela – Ashley Kriel also fought during the apartheid era.”..
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Volgende artikelIsmail Lagardien
WriterLagardien, a visiting professor at the Wits University School of Governance, has worked in the office of the chief economist of the World Bank, as well as the secretariat of the National Planning Commission.