Deputy minister says ‘whites a

Deputy minister says ‘whites are victims of themselves’

SA’s deputy minister of co-operative governance and traditional affairs believes that white South Africans have fallen victim to the system they were ‘fighting to preserve’.

Deputy minister says ‘whites a

According to deputy minister Andries Nel, racism in South Africa must be attacked, as well as the ‘unquestioned acceptance of material values underlying racism’.

“For in becoming racialists and exploiters, they become closed off to important areas of human experience,” Nel said at a round table on whiteness, Afrikaans and Afrikaners in Johannesburg.

“The essential thing white South Africans lose is openness to the future and to other people.”

In a report by News24, Nel was speaking under the theme Where are the Suzmans, Slovos, Fischers and Naudes of today?

“We must show to all those who accept dominant values how much they lose in this society and how much they could gain in a good society.”

Nel added that South Africa needs to overcome the mistrust between the country’s major social partners.

The ANC’s National Development Plan’s (NDP) vision for SA was a nation where everyone feels free, yet bound to other citizens; a country where everyone embraced their full potential and where opportunity was determined by ability, education and work.

Now, while the NDP as a plan is fantastic, to date it hasn’t exactly played out the way in which the ruling party envisioned.

“We need partnerships across society working together towards a common purpose. Government had to shoulder a large share of the responsibility,” Nel said.

SA’s biggest problem and the biggest cause of conflict is the unequal distribution of wealth which directly coincides with race and indirectly, with cultural differences.

Nel believes that, were we to bridge the wealth gap, the major reason for conflict would go along with it.