Own up, SA's whites told

2006-06-14 19:39

Carole Landry

Johannesburg - As the 30th anniversary of the June 16 1976 Soweto uprising approaches, there have been renewed calls for white South Africans to own up to the atrocities of the apartheid regime.

Hundreds of black youths died at the hands of police during the protests against the enforced use of Afrikaans in schools.

The uprising is being celebrated in the wake of a firestorm touched off by Archbishop Desmond Tutu who remarked that whites had not shown enough gratitude for the magnanimity shown by blacks.

His comments drew a strong response from both sides of the racial divide, confirming that Tutu had struck a raw nerve.

Nkosinathi Biko, son of anti-apartheid activist Steve Biko, said whites should take responsibility for the sins of apartheid.

"White South Africans must reckon with history for what it is and not for what they wish it to have been," Biko wrote in a newspaper commentary.

Biko, who was six years old when his father died in detention in 1977 after being tortured by security police, said the new generation of black South Africans might not be as gracious as their contemporaries.

'Beyond the honeymoon period'

"If Bishop Tutu, who is the embodiment of reconciliation, is making these kinds of statements, should we not be concerned that there may be a growing intolerance," said Biko.

"We hear a lot of community voices that say 'we are well beyond the honeymoon period'," said Biko.

The debate about whether whites should atone for the sins of apartheid is a recurring one.

A campaign spearheaded in 2000 by former African National Congress member of parliament Carl Niehaus to get prominent whites to sign a statement apologising for apartheid, fell flat.

Niehaus said whites had failed to recognise that they were the "benefactors of apartheid" and "continue to benefit to this day".

"We don't deal with it properly," said Niehaus.

"We seem to want to forget too quickly the damages of apartheid that have been inflicted."

"The 30th anniversary is an opportunity to go back to the white community and say: 'A large number of young people were shot and killed for no other reason than for the fact that they did not want to live in a society where they were second-class citizens,'" said Niehaus.

'Scapegoats'

Many whites maintain that they did not take part in, nor condone, repression of blacks and that they are being made scapegoats for the ANC government's shortcomings in its drive to combat poverty.

The man who shared a Nobel Peace prize with Nelson Mandela for shepherding the country towards democracy, former president FW de Klerk, said that while apartheid was "morally indefensible", whites had made sacrifices that deserved recognition.

"It required considerable courage ... to overcome their reasonable fears and put their trust in their erstwhile enemies," De Klerk wrote in his newspaper rebuttal.

- SAPA