I am a racist and, I have every right to be.
I am a racist in the new South Africa and there's no authority that can legally deny me this right without violating my basic right to freewill. Let me first assure you that there is nowhere on the cave paintings of the Khoi or the San, not even in the foundations of the old Cape Fort, neither on the sandy shores of King Shaka's Kwazulu does it legally forbid me to choose being a racist.
I swam in deep rivers hoping to speak to die Groot Krokodil; I have also searched from cover to cover in the pages tracking The Icon's long walk; from the libraries in Sussex I planted myself in literature and poetry; when I then failed my expedition was followed by song, dance and folklore at the Union Buildings hoping that I my find this single law that dispels my racism.
The simple rather sad truth about our country's truth in legality is that there is no law that renders racism a criminal offence. A common man would apply his sense, after having looked at our history, diversity and fragile tensions, that maybe racism should be outlawed. As much as it is a crime to murder, steal, fraud, even a simple lie is considered a crime but racism is not. Perhaps racism is merely a symptom or is it? My Bantu education once taught me a humble lesson about a plant – “as a flower hanging on a branch which stems from a root” - if this is so then which part of nature is racism. Is it flower, branch, stem or root?
This is how our laws have been addressing this problem when we should have been outlawing not just the acts of racism(the flower), or merely cultivating the society(the branches); or our history (the stem) but our legal system should uproot and cast out this concept of racism from society as a whole.
In recent weeks I have learned that racism during apartheid was merely a defining the barrier line between the relationship of the OPPRESSOR and the OPPRESSED. The abolition of apartheid in South Africa faded away this barrier line, and left society with its own definition of the OPPRESSOR/OPPRESSED. Unfortunately this relationship is not necessarily racist but from the beginning of times there have always been relations between master/servant, teacher/learner, parent/child and etc which in essence have no wrong in nature. Consider these wise familiar words "... I have fought against white domination, and I have fought against black domination..." do you still think that racism/oppression/domination is about colour? Or is it simply about God's one gift to mankind, Dominion.
Dominion allows me the right to choose, thus until racism is outlawed in South Africa then I shall remain a racist because I have every legal right to choose to be.
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