Leon: Mbeki using race card

2003-06-18 16:17

Cape Town - Democratic Alliance leader Tony Leon on Wednesday accused President Thabo Mbeki of leading South Africa down a "cul-de-sac of racism", and called for dialogue to help address the real issues facing the country.

In a hard-hitting attack during the president's budget debate in the National Assembly, he said Mbeki had used the "race card" to deflect criticism, rekindling fear and hatred among the population.

"It is under President Mbeki's watch that South Africa has moved from the politics of the rainbow nation and reconciliation to the politics of race-labelling and race-baiting.

"For when the leader of this country uses racism in order to silence his political opponents, he ignites the fires of hatred and despair that South Africa has worked hard to extinguish."

Leon stressed that if South Africa was to be a real democracy, government had to tackle the real issues facing the country: poverty, joblessness, crime, Aids and Zimbabwe.

It was time to undertake a serious dialogue between government and opposition parties about the fundamental changes that South Africa needed.

This dialogue, he said, had to be a "two-way street".

"But, if the president insists on making all questions into matters of race, then we are going to find ourselves in a dead-end street.

"We need to get out of the cul-de-sac of racism and return to the inspiring vision of a rainbow nation," Leon said.

Mbeki's silence

On Zimbabwe, the opposition leader said the president had suggested in the past that the pre-occupation about that country, in South Africa and overseas, was because white people had died or been displaced.

While this may explain why some people had made a noise, it did not explain Mbeki's silence on the matter.

The President had consistently used race to deflect legitimate criticism, and had tried to turn Aids from a medical emergency into a racial one.

He not only used the race card, but "flamed" his critics in order to silence them, Leon said.

"He (Mbeki) describes the most grotesque stereotypes of African people that he can conjure in his imagination.

"And then he presents these to the South Africa public, telling us that these grisly ideas are the things his critics embrace and endorse."

As an example, the president had, in his weekly newsletter on the party website, ANC Today, "flamed" those who had criticised the arms deal as being "determined to prove everything in an anti-African stereotype".

No other politician referred to such stereotypes and reverted to such degrading and retrograde language.

"Indeed, the most alarming suggestion made by President Mbeki is that we, as Africans, should make use of these stereotypes in measuring our progress."

Leon said South Africans should judge themselves by the forward-looking standards of the New Partnership for Africa's Development (Nepad), and not the racist hysteria of the past.

- SAPA