Issued by: Government Communications (GCIS)
SPEECH DELIVERED BY THE MINISTER FOR PROVINCIAL AFFAIRS AND CONSTITUTIONAL DEVELOPMENT, MINISTER VALLI MOOSA, ON THE OCCASION OF THE LAUNCH OF THE DEBATE ON THE CULTURE, RELIGION, LANGUAGE AND NATION BUILDING. NATIONAL ASSEMBLY - 4 AUGUST 1998.
The commission for the promotion and the protection of the rights of cultural religious and linguistic communities and the process towards its establishment provides South Africa with an opportunity few nations have enjoyed. It provides us with an opportunity to purposefully and deliberately lay a foundation for the building of our nation in a manner that is compatible with the full expression on the part of each community of its culture, religion and language.
A question that does arise is whether or not the concept of this commission gives credence to ethnicity, tribalism and racialism. Does it for example, give credibility and permanence to divisions in South African society, which were promoted by apartheid?
Apartheid had a need to emphasise the cultural, religious and linguistic differences between communities for the purpose of divide and rule and for justifying the policy of separateness. This leads to the question: to what extent is the present reality of ethnic identity nothing more than a production of apartheid and colonialism?
Some have argued that ethnic identities are purely a function of the socio-economic circumstance of communities. Such a class reductionist view would conclude that the prevalance of ethnic identities is due to the fact that, under apartheid, access to resources, power and privilege was granted or denied on the basis of culture, religion and language. This leads, inevitably to the conclusion that in a truly egalitarian South Africa ethnic identities will disappear. There is little evidence, either here or internationally, to justify this line or argument.
While ethnic identity is not simply a function of our apartheid and colonial past, or of the socio-economic circumstances of communities, or the class composition of society, we must take care to distance ourselves from apartheid and ethno-chauvinistic notions of ethnicity. We must reject the idea that humanity is intrinsically composed of a variety of "sub-species" which have little in common. This static view insists that ethnicity is part of the order of nature, that we have always been and will always be, ordered along certain pre-ordained racial and ethnic lines.
We must also reject the notion that South African society is not made up of individual citizens but is rather a collection of ethnic groups. This consociational characterisation not only fails to conform to reality but it is also aimed at preventing the emergence of a national identity.
We may not agree on the nature and origins of ethnic identity, but we probably will be able to agree that there is a certain reality in South Africa: most South Africans do have a cultural, religious a linguistic identity; Most South Africans associate with other South Africans with some or other identity. Apartheid granted privileges and meted out oppression along ethnic and racial lines, and to this day these prejudices continue to prevail; and, there is a striking co-incidence between the ethnic/racial divide and the class divide.
We also know of violent conflicts in the Great Lakes region, Eastern Europe and elsewhere in which ethnicity and religion is no minor factor.
The establishment of the section 185 commission is a response to this reality, together with the objective of striving towards nationhood, national patriotism and national identity. Ours is not a vain search for a clinical "solution" to the national question. We must rather, through this commission regard our many cultures as a national asset - an asset that can contribute to the wealth of our nation.
One of the saddest and most pathetic phenomena during the Apartheid years was the undignified practice of false identity claims in order to avoid ethnic victimisation or to gain access to privilege. One such occurrence was the manner in which many San and Nama people kept their identity a secret because of the special victimisation they experienced. Another was the manner in which some lighter skinned black families were ripped apart as a result of a few family members "succeeding" in obtaining and official "white" classification.
Let us ensure that we never again as a society create the conditions which will make people subject themselves to much humiliation. This could well be an unintended consequence of a growing contestation among some to lay claim to the description "indigenous". Ethnic Afrikaners would lay claim to being indigenous on the basis that the Afrikaner community is a product of South Africa and South Africa alone and whose ancestors have been in this country for more than three centuries. Africans would, for obvious reasons, lay claim to this description. The Khoi - San communities lay claim to this description on the basis that their ancestors once occupied almost all of Southern Africa.
At the same time we must not deny the reality that many of the injustices of the past are still the injustices of the present. On average, white children still receive better education than black children do. The unemployment rate among whites is lower than that among black. The homeless are largely African and the poorest of the poor are African.
We can not but fail to recognise that while all South Africans enjoy equal civil and political rights this society still denies the majority of Africans their socio-economic rights.
While granting due weight to the current reality let us be constantly aware that the national question is dialectical and dynamic in nature, not rigid and static. The present reality is neither pre-ordained or immutable, nor is it immune from the forces of change unleashed by the democratic revolution.
In the final analysis our endeavor to promote and protect the rights of cultural, religious, and linguistic communities will only succeed if we attach primary significance to our being members of the human tribe and therefore practice a universal humanist culture, observe the religion of mutual respect and speak the language of love.
I thank you.