ANC entrenches racism - Boesak

2008-07-31 11:40

Johannesburg - Anti-apartheid activist Allan Boesak accused the ruling party on Wednesday evening of entrenching racial hatred instead of preaching tolerance.

"The ANC has succumbed to the subtle but pernicious temptations of ethnic thinking, has brought back the language of ethnicity into the speech of the movement and has, as government, brought back the hated system of racial categorisation," Boesak told some 2 000 people at a memorial lecture in Cape Town.

He also said affirmative action had in some cases "taken on new forms of racial exclusion, ruthlessly and thoughtlessly throwing overboard the solidarity forged through years of struggle", the Cape Times reported on Thursday.

Boesak was delivering the fifth annual Ashley Kriel Memorial Youth Lecture at the University of the Western Cape. Kriel, a struggle hero from the Cape Flats, was killed by security police in 1987.

'Flirting with ethnicity'

Boesak said he had warned in 1983 already, at the formation of the United Democratic Front, of the dangers of "flirting with ethnicity".

"[It] does not solve differences, it entrenches them...

"That is why, before we know it, we begin to accuse and slander, to maim and kill in a xenophobic frenzy so utterly strange to the deepest heart of our people."

Boesak said the poor people in South Africa had been betrayed by those hungry for power, warning that the situation was like a "time bomb" - "real and ticking".

"Today, everywhere we look, it takes but the merest provocation for the ghosts of racism to rise and haunt us, because we have buried them in graves too shallow and too close to home."

'Kill for Zuma' comments criticised

He also criticised the "kill for Zuma" comments made by ANC Youth League president Julius Malema and Cosatu's Zwelinzima Vavi.

"What we hear now, despite all the justifications, is not a willingness to die for the sake of others, but a desire to kill for a cause that is not necessary to kill for, and that Jacob Zuma himself, I am sure, would not want anybody to die for [him]," said Boesak.

- SAPA