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Date: Wed, 8 Nov 2000 09:33:50 EST
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Subject: [AfricaMatters] Police assault shows up S.African racism
ANALYSIS-Police assault shows up S.African racism
By Brendan Boyle
JOHANNEBSURG, Nov 8 (Reuters) - Graphic video images of laughing white
policemen setting dogs onto black victims have highlighted hardening racial
attitudes in South Africa six years after the miracle transition from
apartheid to democracy.
Political analysts said the effect of the images would be determined largely
by the reaction of white South Africans to the evidence of continuing racism.
"This is not an isolated incident," said Paula McBride, coordinator of the
independent Rights Watch human rights group.
"We have recently had increasing numbers of complaints of racist attacks on
farms, we've had reports of racism in schools and we get a lot of complaints
about police racism," she said.
"Whether this incident will further harden attitudes will be up to the
whites...whether they are prepared to see what it means and do something
about it."
Political analysts said racial polarisation was increasing six years after
the last white government handed power to Nelson Mandela in May 1994 in a
relatively peaceful transition hailed around the world as a miracle.
They said the harsh post-apartheid reality of increasing crime and slow
economic growth was undermining white confidence in the future and black hope
of relief from poverty.
More and more, social debate was forming around race, with blacks and whites
taking opposing views on key issues from AIDS to corruption, crime and
economic development.
In one example cited by analysts, most black commentators said the press
should respect the privacy of a prominent government official thought to have
died of AIDS.
Most white commentators felt the case should have been used to highlight the
dangers of the disease, which remains a cause of shame in black society.
BLACK AND WHITE TAKE OPPOSING VIEWS
In the Cape Town parliament, the press corps was divided over an
administration proposal to evict them from their offices in the parliament
building to space outside the precinct.
Opposition came mainly from white reporters, while many black reporters were
more sympathetic to the government.
"It's a race issue. It boils down to the fact that, if I am black, I identify
with the leaders of the country," said Simon Kekana, a political analyst at
Durban-Westville University.
"At parliament, the black reporters are more inclined to see the government's
point of view.
"If I am white, I don't identify with them.... It's as if I feel that because
these people are black they cannot take the country forward," he said.
White doubts have been fuelled by President Robert Mugabe's land offensive in
neighbouring Zimbabwe, where the government is seizing white-owned land to
give to blacks.
At a recent government-sponsored conference on racism, President Thabo Mbeki
said whites had a special responsibility to undo the legacy of apartheid, a
comment some saw as a warning the whites that they should surrender some of
their wealth.
Kekana said hardening racism was taking different forms in middle and working
class communities.
"It is amongst the working class that the killings, violence and paintings
are happening," he said in a refence to a recent spate of racial attacks.
In one, a shop owner stripped an adolescent black girl to the waist and
painted her white after accusing her of stealing.
In another, a white businessman tied a colleague to a truck and dragged him
to his death after an evening drinking together.
Tuesday's screening of an hour-long 1998 assault by six white policemen on
three young black men thought to have been illegal Mozambican immigrants was
the second video-taped example of police brutality in a year.
A BBC camerawoman last year filmed policemen beating two alleged criminals so
badly that one later died.
MIDDLE CLASS RACISM FOCUSSES ON VALUES
Kekana said middle class racism had more to do with competition for jobs and
scepticism about the corporate and political values of other racial groups.
Vista University analyst Sipho Seepe blamed racial polarisation on Mandela's
successor, President Thabo Mbeki, who has said repeatedly that South Africa
remains a country of two nations, one rich and white and the other poor and
black.
"Mbeki is bringing up racism now because he is failing to deliver what the
people need and expect from him," he said.
He said this was in contrast to Mandela, who had made reconciliation and
forgiveness trade marks of his term.
Seepe said Mbeki's African National Congress was likely to exploit the police
incident ahead of municipal elections on December 5, using the attack as
proof whites could not be trusted.
Kekana said, however, he did not expect the police assault, in which four
dogs were encouraged to maul black men, to affect the election result.
"People know about this sort of thing...poverty is what is spreading and that
is what is going to determine how people vote," he said.
09:10 11-08-00
Copyright 2000 Reuters Limited. All rights reserved.
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