May Day greetings to the Workers!

On Tuesday, 1 MAY, our workers will join the workers of the world to celebrate May Day. We take this opportunity to salute the South African workers and their counterparts throughout the world and to wish all of them a Happy May Day!

We are certain that other sections of our population, recognising the leading role that our workers played in our liberation struggle, and the contribution they are making now to the process of the reconstruction and development of our country, will also join our workers as they celebrate May Day.

One of the central objectives of our struggle for national liberation, the national democratic revolution (NDR), was and is the liberation of our workers from racial oppression and the attendant super-exploitation, as well as the triple oppression of the women workers.

It is therefore important that as we continue to pursue the goals of the NDR we should constantly assess the progress we are making towards the achievement of these objectives, bearing in mind the various objectives set, in particular, by the International Labour Organisation (ILO).

In this regard, among other things, the "Global Report under the Follow-up to the ILO Declaration on Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work"
submitted to the 2004 International Labour Conference, said: "The fundamental principle of freedom of association and the right to collective bargaining is a reflection of human dignity. It guarantees the ability of workers and employers to join and act together to defend not only their economic interests but also civil liberties such as the right to life, security, integrity and personal and collective freedom. It guarantees protection against discrimination, interference and harassment. As an integral part of democracy, it is also key to realising the other fundamental rights set out in the ILO Declaration."

Coming as we do from our long history of colonialism and apartheid, it was necessary that the NDR should set itself various goals intended specifically to benefit and contribute to the upliftment of the working class in our country. Among other things, therefore, the democratic revolution pursued and pursues the objectives to:

• ensure that the workers enjoy full democratic rights together with the rest of our people;
• entrench the rights to freedom of association and collective bargaining;
• create the possibility for the organised working class to participate in the formulation of public policies that relate directly to its future;
• ensure the sustained improvement of the standard of living and quality of life of the workers;
• reduce and eradicate unemployment in the context of a growing economy;
• end disparities in wages and working conditions based on race, colour and gender;
• expand workers' access to such benefits as health and safety at work, unemployment insurance, general health care, a retirement income and maternity and paternity leave;
• raise the skills levels especially of the workers drawn from the previously oppressed sections of our population; and,
• open the doors of culture and learning both to the workers and their children.

The historic political victory of the democratic revolution in 1994, in which the working class played a leading role, was the defining moment which created the possibility for the achievement of these objectives. For the first time in 350 years all the workers of our country won full democratic rights, including the right to vote and stand for election to all our legislatures, ending the long period during which the majority of the working class had been denied the possibility to participate in determining the destiny of the country of their birth.

To give further expression to this new possibility, the democratic revolution acted immediately to approve the National Economic Development and Labour Council Act, No 35 of 1994, which established the Council (NEDLAC). The Founding Declaration of NEDLAC, signed by representatives of the government and organised labour and business on 18 February 1995, entitled "Growth, equity and participation", said:

"The democratic election of 1994 opened a new era for South Africa. It was the decisive step in the transition to democracy. Now our country must meet the challenges of social development and economic growth.

"South Africa is a land rich in resources, with a strong and diversified economy. It has a people eager to make the democracy work. It has a well-developed physical and financial infrastructure, such as transport, telecommunications and the banking system.

"South Africa is also characterised by severe inequality in incomes, skills, economic power, ownership, and a skewed pattern of social development. This, together with large-scale unemployment and inadequate economic performance, has created major problems in our society.

"Government, organised labour, organised business and community-based organisations need to develop and strengthen cooperative mechanisms to address the challenges facing our new democracy. Our three defining challenges are:

• Sustainable economic growth - to facilitate wealth creation; as a means of financing social programmes; as a spur to attracting investment; and as the key way of absorbing many more people into well-paying jobs.
• Greater social equity - both at the workplace and in the communities - to ensure that the large-scale inequalities are adequately addressed, and that society provides, at least, for all the basic needs of its people.
• Increased participation - by all major stakeholders, in economic decision-making, at national, company and shop-floor level - to foster cooperation in the production of wealth, and its equitable distribution...

"The National Economic Development and Labour Council (NEDLAC) is the vehicle by which government, labour, business and community organisations will seek to cooperate, through problem-solving and negotiation, on economic, labour and development issues, and related challenges facing the country."

Since its foundation more than ten years ago, NEDLAC has considered such important pieces of legislation as:

• the Labour Relations Act;
• the Basic Conditions of Employment Act;
• the Employment Equity Act;
• the Compensation for Occupational Injuries and Diseases Act;
• the Occupational Health and Safety Act;
• the Skills Development Act;
• the Skills Development Levies Act; and,
• the Unemployment Insurance Act No 63 of 2001.

These laws, in addition to the relevant Constitutional provisions, represent a revolution in terms of the legally protected rights of the South African working class and the legal framework that enables us to address the objectives mentioned in the Founding Declaration of NEDLAC, which encompass the goals of the NDR.

For example the democratic state, acting through the Minister of Labour, has made a number of Sectoral Determinations affecting some sectors of the economy, to set minimum wages and prescribe working conditions to protect the most vulnerable sections of the working class from abuse and super-exploitation. These Determinations have included farm workers, domestic workers, forestry workers, contract cleaners, workers in the private security sector, workers in the wholesale and retain sector, children in the performing arts, and so on.

For a long period of time, at least from the 1970s, the South African economy, among other things, imposed increasing misery on the working people of our country. Among other things, this was expressed through retrenchments and greater reliance on machinery rather than increased employment to expand production.

This meant that for at least two decades not only was the army of the unemployed increasing, but the number of employed workers was also diminishing. This process also represented a fundamental structural change that would pose an important challenge to the NDR.

The colonial and apartheid economy had been built on the backs of millions of cheap and unskilled black workers who could easily be dumped into, or left to rot in the native reserves/Bantustans as "surplus people". However, as the economy came to rely more on machinery and was later, during the democratic years, fully exposed to the global market, it required skilled and semi-skilled workers, having prescribed that the millions especially of African workers would remain uneducated and unskilled.

This has placed the challenge of improving the level of education and the skills of our workers at the very heart of the task of the NDR to improve the standard of living and quality of life of our working people. This is precisely the reason that the democratic revolution had to approve the Skills Development Act and take other initiatives to prepare our workers and working people fully to participate as producers in the modern economy and society we are striving to build.

With regard to the important challenge posed by the sustained shrinkage of the working class reflected in continuous retrenchments and natural attrition, and therefore the growing numbers of unemployed workers, it is only during the period of the democratic revolution that we have begun to reverse this trend.

The number of employed people has been increasing at a rate of about half-a-million a year in the past three years, amounting to one-and-a-half million during this period. Thus the number of employed people increased from 12.3 million in September 2005 to 12.8 million in September 2006. The number of unemployed persons dropped from 4.4 million in September 2005 to
4.3 million in September last year. Also on the decline was the number of persons who were not economically active, which dropped from 12.9 million to 12.8 million.

Of significant interest also is the report in the latest Quarterly Employment Statistics survey that there are around 750,000 more jobs in the formal economy than previously estimated by Statistics SA. This confirms an observation we have made repeatedly that our official statistics continue to underestimate the size and rate of growth of our economy.

The employment figures we have cited signify that the democratic revolution is succeeding to make a qualitative break with the past with regard to issues important both to the working class and our society as a whole, the issues of labour absorption, employment and unemployment. However the quantitative imperative still remains that we increase the job creation rate to accelerate the decline in the level of unemployment.

Fully to understand what is happening to the economy, including the issue of employment, we will also have to make a serious effort to understand the informal sector - the so-called grey economy. (While there are currently an estimated 2.1 million businesses in South Africa, only 600,000 were in the formal sector.)

In this regard, a recent report by the economist, Mike Schussed, says more South Africans are working for themselves as entrepreneurs with one in six now self employed, whereas this figure in 2002 was one in seven.

Schussler said: "That's a huge increase. Partly it's survival, partly it's entrepreneurship. I think more and more people realise that they are not going to get rich working for someone else...The biggest challenge is how to bring people from the informal into the formal sector, so that they can not only pay tax but also be on a more even footing and get access to finance."

There is no doubt that the democratic revolution has also brought about an improvement in the standard of living of the working people, consistent with the objectives of the NDR to work to end poverty and underdevelopment and realise the goal of a better life for all, especially the poor.

For instance, gross earnings paid to employees in the formal non-agricultural business sector increased between the quarters ended September 2006 and December 2006. According to the December 2006 Quarterly Employment Statistics (QES) survey gross earnings paid to employees during the quarter ended December 2006 (October 2006 to December 2006) amounted to
R220,583 million. This represents a quarterly increase of R20,822 million or 10.4% compared with the quarter ended September 2006.

In a 2007 paper entitled "Wage Trends in Post-Apartheid South Africa:
Constructing an Earnings Series from Household Survey Data", Rulof Burger and Derek Yu say, among other things:

"The share of workers earning less than R400 per month decreased from 14 to 8.5%, while the percentage of those earning between R400 and R1,200 increased from 22 to 31%. It follows that except for the increase in mean earnings, many of the very lowest formal sector wage earners must have experienced an increase in their incomes between 1998 and 2005...

"Evidently, the earnings of unskilled and semi-skilled workers were slightly lower in 2005 than in 1995, whereas skilled earnings increased substantially over the same period. This is consistent with what one would expect to see in an economy with a shortage of skilled labour and an abundance of low-skilled unemployed (Altman 2005).

After a large decrease in their earnings between 1995 and 2002, unskilled wages have increased by 27% between 2002 and 2005, whereas the earnings growth of the highly skilled appears have slowed down."

In addition to this, the democratic state has worked consistently to expand the social wage especially for the benefit of the poor among our working people. In this regard, in the State of the Nation Address this year we said, "It is a matter of pride that, in line with our commitment to build a caring society, we have since 2004 improved service provision and other aspects of the social wage, (which includes social grants, housing, free basic services etc.)"

We must also remember that all workers have benefited from tax relief since 1996. The tax threshold in 1996 was R15,580. The tax threshold in the current year is R43,000. This means that employees earning less than R43,000 do not pay income tax. In 1996 rands, this amounts to about an additional R27,500 that is not taxed. Again this was done within the context of finding ways and means of improving the standard of living of the working people.

As we celebrate May Day, we will have to remind ourselves constantly that not surprisingly, given the fact of the entrenched legacy of colonialism and apartheid, the NDR has a continuing responsibility to pursue the goal of a better life especially for the working people.

Though we have made some progress in this regard, it is obvious that we still have a long way to go. Accordingly, wherever we may be on May Day, we should both celebrate the advances we have made, and chart the way forward with regard to the acceleration of our advance towards the achievement of the goal of a better life for all and the realisation of all the objectives of the NDR. We wish our workers and working people a happy May Day!

Policy Discussion Documents IV

Pursuit of profit undermines media freedom

One of the most important achievements in transforming the South African media environment since 1994 has been the removal of media censorship and the commitment of the new democratic order to guarantee the right of all South Africans to freedom of expression.

However, the exercise of this right remains constrained by a lack of media diversity and the dominance of commercial considerations within the media.

The Constitution, adopted in 1996, says: "Everyone has the right to freedom of expression, which includes... freedom of the press and other media." As with all the rights contained in the Constitution, South Africans have recourse to the judicial system, in particular the Constitutional Court, should they feel these rights are being violated or denied in any way.

Since the transition to democracy, a number of cases have been brought before the courts testing the applicability of this right in various circumstances. The right to freedom of expression needs to be balanced against other rights, such as the right to human dignity and the right to privacy.

There have been legal challenges ranging from issues of defamation and community radio licensing to applications to broadcast court proceedings and the refusal of journalists to testify in criminal cases. In each instance, the courts have had to weigh way up the legality and constitutionality of opposing claims. Whatever view the organisation might take on specific rulings, the ANC has always insisted that the courts are the appropriate site to settle such matters. The organisation has therefore urged respect for these decisions.

While some have argued that the decision to take legal action against a media institution is a form of 'intimidation' or an attempt at censorship, the ANC has argued that all South Africans should be able to exercise their right of recourse to the courts. If their actions are frivolous, malicious or intended to narrow the scope for free expression, then it should be up to the courts to decide on such matters.

But the absence of state censorship and the constitutional guarantee of media freedom is not sufficient for the realisation of the right of all South Africans to freedom of expression.

The right of expression has little effect if the means do not exist for the free expression of views. If control of the media - and access to the media - is concentrated in the hands of a few, then the capacity for the masses to receive and impart information is severely curtailed.

That is why the issue of media freedom cannot be pursued in isolation of media diversity. Media diversity is an integral and necessary component of a progressive understanding of media freedom.

Not only does there need to be a diverse and generally representative range of views and interests represented within the media, but all South Africans need to have avenues to express their views and ideas in the media. The struggle for media freedom therefore also involves the extension of access to the media to as many people as possible.

There have been important changes in the South African media environment over the last decade.
In the field of broadcasting, the South African Broadcasting Corporation
(SABC) has largely been transformed from being a mouthpiece of the apartheid government to becoming a public broadcaster with a mandate to serve all South Africans. Most of the major national and regional radio stations in South Africa are part of the SABC, a public broadcaster that operates in terms of an Act of parliament. While operating independently of government, it is guided by a public service mandate.

Yet this transition has raised a number of challenges. One relates to the issue of funding. While it is not a commercial venture, some of its stations have an explicit function to generate revenue through advertising. The public funding available to the SABC, including from licence fees, is not sufficient on its own to enable it to operate such a diverse and extensive range of broadcasting services. But the need to generate advertising revenue constrains its ability to perform its public service role.

Another challenge is to ensure that in its editorial approach the SABC avoids both the perception and the reality that it is an uncritical mouthpiece for the government of the day. It remains vitally important that the SABC can be relied upon as a credible source of accurate and balanced news, information and analysis, representing in its coverage the diversity of South African society. While non-partisan in its approach, the SABC nevertheless has a responsibility to uphold and promote the values enshrined in the Constitution. The public broadcaster should be explicit in its commitment to nation building, reconciliation, forging an inclusive national identity, and the reconstruction and development of society.

The radio broadcasting environment has opened up significantly. Since 1994 a number of private radio stations have been licensed (some of which were previously owned by the SABC). There are currently 13 commercial radio stations and around 100 community radio stations.

Since community radio is more likely than its mainstream counterparts to give voice to a broader, more diverse and currently under-represented range of South Africans, then it is vital that this sector continues to grow.

Among the issues that will need to be considered at a policy level is whether provision needs to be made for the licensing of more community radio stations so that those sections of society that remain under-represented in the media, the poor and working class in particular, have access to the means to exercise their right to free expression.

Community radio faces a number of significant challenges, including a lack of resources, unreliable revenue streams, and lack of media skills and technical expertise. Those community stations that have managed to have an impact have done so largely because of the tenacity and determination of their staff, the support of the community and the material assistance provided by donors, government and agencies.

In contrast to broadcasting, there are no publicly-owned mainstream newspapers in South Africa. There is, however, a broad spectrum of daily and weekly newspapers, all of which are privately owned and run on a commercial basis. The array of titles would suggest a healthy diversity of voices in the print media.

Yet, although there are a great many newspaper titles available in South Africa, ownership of these papers is concentrated in the hands of just a few companies. Media24, Johnnic Communications and the Independent Group together account for 95% of weekly and daily newspapers sold in South Africa.

The consolidation of ownership probably makes commercial sense, allowing for economies of scale and for the same resources (including content) to be shared among different titles. Yet such consolidation does not contribute to greater diversity in the print media. Rather it limits the possibility for a wide range of voices and interests to be heard.

The concentration of ownership, particularly in the print sector, has a particularly restrictive effect on the freedom of the media. The process of consolidation and the drive to cut costs through, among other things, rationalisation of news gathering operations, leads to homogenisation of content. Within a group, a number of titles will often use the same news stories and rely on the same journalists.

This is not a particularly South African phenomenon. Around the world, consolidation of media groups - and the drive to maximise profit - has led to a global homogenisation of news. It doesn't make much commercial sense, for example, for a newspaper to have international correspondents stationed around the world when it is far cheaper to use international wire services.

Despite protestations to the contrary, there are an increasing number of instances where the supposedly-sacred separation between management and the newsroom is breached, where commercial considerations influence editorial content.

This takes place in a media market in which there is fierce competition for a slice of the upper income market, where the most advertising revenue is to be found. Given that this end of the market represents very particular class interests (and is predominantly white) it stands to reason that media institutions will tend to reflect the preoccupations, values and world view of this small group of society. Even where management may adopt a hands-off approach to editorial matters, they would certainly step in to prevent their title from adopting an editorial stance that may antagonise their target market or alienate advertisers. Dedicated professional journalists that they may be, most editors still need to keep an eye on the bottom line.

The drive to cut costs also diminishes the research capacity, infrastructure and time available to journalists, leading to a herd mentality within large sections of the media. Complex social dynamics and events that lend themselves to a multitude of interpretations are reduced to homogenous soundbites. If one newspaper report takes a particular approach to an issue, it is a fairly safe bet that most other media will follow their lead, with little pause for critical reflection.

Certain phrases and descriptions, no matter how inappropriate or inaccurate, achieve an almost universal usage. Claims published by one media outlet are frequently reported as fact in most others without any effort to independently verify their accuracy.

The consequence of all this is that media freedom is today undermined not by the state, but by various pressures and practices that arise from the commercial imperatives that drive the media.

** This is the fourth in a series of articles summarising the main points covered in the policy discussion documents distributed as part of preparations for the ANC 52nd National Conference.

More Information:

• ANC Policy Discussion Documents, March 2007

White identity in a changing SA PART III

Don't think white, it's all right

This is the third review of the narratives of whiteness discussed in University of Cape Town academic, Melissa Steyn's book, "Whiteness Just Isn't What it Used to Be - White Identity in a Changing South Africa".

The present narrative, 'Don't think white, it's all right' is characterised by two strands: 'Whites are doing it for themselves', and 'We can work it out', with whiteness, viewed through the prism of culture, ethnicity or race, as the premise from which the narrators define their present and future relationship with South Africa.

In our analysis this week, we argue that, as with the narratives discussed in the past two weeks, the narrators of 'Don't think white, it's all right', display their racism despite whatever other qualifications they may factor into their discourse.

Thus, we explain how and why the sense of importance which the narrators attach to (or derive from) whiteness shows the narrators of 'Don't think white, it's all right' gyrating between the previous narratives: 'Still colonial after all these years' and 'This shouldn't happen to a white'.

While it is useful to pay attention to nuances in the narratives discussed in "Whiteness Just Isn't What it Used to Be", the belief in white supremacy from which they all issue has them, at times, blending to a finer point than warrants our attention to identify their distinct features.

'Our essence is our whiteness'

As stated above, the narrators of 'Don't think white, it's all right' take whiteness as the defining point of their relationship with the present and the future. Racism differs only slightly depending on where the narrators sit in relation to the two strands.

"What is important for me," declares a researcher from the 'Whites are doing it for themselves', strand of the narrative, "is the fact that I am an Afrikaner, and that I would like to remain an Afrikaner." The researcher
asserts: "I would like to see the rights of small groups (Afrikaner) entrenched in the constitution."

It is when the researcher continues that the error of his elevation of the sociological construct "Afrikaner" to a "fact" and his call for the entrenchment of minority rights becomes clearer. "Whiteness is greatly integral in my culture and identity. The Afrikaner or Boerevolk is known to be a white volk, as whiteness and the Boerevolk are almost synonymous." In the same response, the researcher yet again emphasises: "One of the characteristics of the Boerevolk is whiteness."
This resonates with the logic that informs the various strands of the narratives 'Still colonial after all these years' and 'This shouldn't happen to a white'. Ethnicity as with the concept of volk, is taken as the defining characteristic of existence.

The demand for the constitutional provision of racially distinct and exclusive geographical spaces for "small groups" - so much evocative of the bantustans of yesteryear - issues in part, from the understanding of South Africans as constituted of ethnic and racial groups who cannot possibility live together, in harmony in an integrated geographical space. This is what the researcher means when he says he would "like to see the rights of small groups (Afrikaner) entrenched in the constitution."

Whereas this narrative will, at times, acknowledge the historical injustice of the past, such acknowledgement is always firmly within a racist framework. This is unsurprising since whiteness is taken as a natural and not a socio-historical phenomenon. It is also projected as a source of envy in "non-whites", which they would distinctively seek to envelope themselves in.

Says the researcher: "I think that deep down, most blacks would like to be white. In some way, they envy whites for their whiteness. Bearing this in mind, I am glad to be white, and should I be physically reborn, I would like to be white again."

It is difficult to make a distinction between the 'Still colonial after all these years' narrative and the 'Whites are doing it for themselves'. An insurance broker says: "I cannot speak for the blacks, but being white has definitely affected my personality, my beliefs, my education, my wealth, etc."

That the insurance broker should be in doubt about the socially determined outcomes arising out of being white, on the one hand, and being black, on the other, is instructive. It points to the engineered "determined ignorance of whites", (with the word "ignore" deeply embedded within "ignorance") to which we referred last week.

A dentist argues in similar vein: "I do not feel that my gain was provided by their loss. My gain was in emerging in a culture which has become dominant viz. literacy, trading, technology, materialistic. Dominant by oppression? Maybe!!"

The "determined ignorance" to which we refer continues to be upheld, among others, by opposition political parties and elements within the persuasive industries, most notably, the media, in South Africa today.

The Sunday Times editorial of 18 March 2007 typifies this tendency in its critique of President Thabo Mbeki's online letter in ANC Today of the same week when the paper's editor, Mondli Makhanya, makes, among others, the extraordinary assertion that racism is now a phenomenon of "[a few] atypical whites who still call blacks 'kaffirs'." Makhanya bemoans that the President sought to "bolster his own denialism on crime" by reference to these atypical whites.

In the introduction of the book, Steyn notes this tendency - "of considerable resistance to talking about race as a social category" - represented, in part, by questions such as "Aren't we beyond this?"

Let us return to the strand, 'Whites are doing it for themselves', in the present narrative. "Perhaps," continues the insurance broker speculatively, "being white affected my life in a positive way, while being black affected many blacks negatively." The insurance broker concludes with the punch line:
"White people tend to care more about their surroundings and keeping it clean than blacks do."

The familiar subtext - of a superior culture - underlying the previous narratives, infuses the 'Whites doing for themselves' strand of the 'Don't think white, It's all right' narrative. So does characteristic whining and victimhood also hold sway.

"There are many, especially the radicals," says the researcher "who hate white people and would like to see them removed from the face of the earth."
And, according to the researcher, among the radicals "is a large criminal group who murder even among their own people (blacks). Of course this is nothing new. Ever since I grew up, those blacks who hate the whites did so, before blacks took over the government."

According to this logic, this should surely mean that, if the insatiable hatred for whites that drove the black mind was uncontrollable when they were powerless, their ascension to power must have opened the flood gates - there must therefore be a relationship between crime and the black government. "The frequent attacks and murders of white persons by blacks [is disturbing]. Three weeks ago, an old man of ninety (white) was murdered by two blacks just five houses away from where I stay."

The dentist to which we have just referred bitterly complains that 'White'
in post apartheid South Africa "means that one is a has-been, discredited, untrusted. Whiteness was privilege, power, and advantage. Those features have no credibility now, and along with them being discarded, so whiteness is also a discard."

In addition to what we have already stated to be the implications of these remarks is a deep sense of alienation. The researcher confides that growing up under apartheid has robbed them of the "skills in chatting to people of other groups". He confesses to not being "comfortable" in mixed settings.

We now turn to the second strand of the narrative 'Don't think white, it's all right'. It is called: 'We can work it out'. Although it does not jettison whiteness, it factors in tacit accommodation of changes taking place in the country. Says Steyn: "Listening to this narrative [one] becomes aware of the fact that these narrators are doing their homework to 'get the story right'."

They are, to a limited extent, coming to critical terms with the received indoctrination of their upbringing, albeit still within the context of whiteness. A high school pupil asserts that: "Being white in South Africa in the present time is not only a time of freedom for the blacks, at last, but also for many white South Africans who didn't agree with the doings of the old regime."

But evidently, freedom is not always perceived as a beneficial condition for all. Freedom is, to a large measure, for blacks and their (few) white supporters. One can still sense this warped understanding even among those who may feel qualified relief, such as when an insurance brokers says: "I feel in the freedom I and 'they' now have."

Steyn notes that although they still talk in terms of 'us' and 'them', the respondents of this strand of the narrative "are more inclined to talk in terms of relational constructs, stressing mutuality and openness". She adds:
"the 'other' is less a demon drawn from the collective imaginary, and more a person."

Notwithstanding its flexibility, this strand of the narrative, 'Don't think white, it's all right', demonstrates how ill-equipped the narrators are to handle change, to accept and meaningfully participate in the non-racialisation of South African society. What obstructs them, as is the case with narrators of the narratives discussed thus far, is their persistence in believing in their racial superiority.

Unlike the hardened colonials, the purveyors of this narrative have done a little homework and will not call people 'kaffirs'. The infrequency of such offensive phrases, however, does not justify what would, in reality amount to an ahistorical assertion - the suggestion that racism has now become atypical.

As argued last week, the altruistic colonial often poses more difficulty in exposing racism in their narrative. We can be led to believe that we are indeed "beyond this"; as a consequence of which we leave, intact, the structural relations that perpetuate racism.

This is a painful process for the racially privileged to come to grips with; for privilege is never given up easily. As Melissa Steyn says of her own personal journey in coming to terms with her own whiteness: "I continue to struggle through the multiple fences of white identity that my heritage constructed to define me. But bits of flesh remain caught in the barbs. A white skin is not skin that can be shed without losing some blood."

** "Whiteness Just Isn't What it Used to Be - White Identity in a Changing South Africa", by Melissa Steyn: State University of New York Press, Albany, NY. 2001.

Nigerian elections

Working to build a winning African nation

After the recent elections in Nigeria, the Independent National Election Commission (INEC) announced that the PDP Presidential candidate, Alhaji Umaru Musa Yar'Adua, had won the elections. On 25 April, President of the Republic Thabo Mbeki sent the following message to Alhaji Umaru Yar'Adua:

"On behalf of the Government of the Republic of South Africa and in my own name, I am honoured to congratulate you on your election as President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria and wish you success as you discharge your responsibilities in this high position.

"We look forward to the further strengthening of the warm and close relations of friendship and solidarity between the governments and peoples of our countries.

"I will also be very happy to renew our personal acquaintance and to work with you in the interests of both our peoples as well as our continent.

"We are greatly encouraged by the invitation you have extended to other political leaders of the Nigerian people to join hands with you as you pursue the noble goal of building a prosperous, secure and better Nigeria.

"We say this bearing in mind especially the comments made by HE President Olusegun Obasanjo that the Presidential Elections were not perfect, as well as the observations made by the ECOWAS [Economic Community of West African States] Observer Mission, led by Sir Dawda Kairaba Jawara, in its Preliminary Declaration on the Presidential and National Assembly Elections.

"In this regard, we fully support the appeal made by the ECOWAS Observer Mission that:

• 'the electorate, political parties and candidates (should) use exclusively peaceful and constitutional means to seek redress to any electoral grievances that may arise'; and that,
• 'the Nigerian authorities (should) empower the electoral tribunals to fast-track the resolution of all complaints with a view to ensuring the speedy resolution of all disputes arising from the elections.'

"Please accept our congratulations and best wishes and our assurance that, as before, we remain ready to extend a hand of solidarity to you and the great Nigerian people as you work to build a winning African nation."

The ANC would like to add its voice to the appeal that our Nigerian brothers and sisters should use the electoral tribunals to resolve any disputes arising from the elections, reaffirming their resolve to solve their problems by peaceful and constitutional means.

Given the observations made about the elections, including those made by President Obasanjo, the ECOWAS Observer Mission, and others, we hope that the Nigerian political leadership as a whole will engage one another in dialogue to agree on a common programme of action to address the concerns of the Nigerian people and all sections of their leadership.

We continue to count on the Federal Republic of Nigeria and the sister Nigerian people to play a leading role in the renewal of our continent and are therefore convinced that Nigeria's leaders dispose of all the required wisdom peacefully to resolve any problems the Federal Republic may be facing.

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