Apartheid to blame for racism today - top journalist

19 July 2016 - 19:27 By Neo Goba

South Africa’s Apartheid regime is remembered as one of the worst crimes against humanity of the 20th century and press council executive director Joe Thloloe believes it is to blame for the existence of racism in our country today. "The effects we have today are the effects of apartheid and there is no doubt about that. The notion of one race‚ the human race‚ was raised ages ago by [Robert Sobukwe] but that has not become the current thought‚" said Thloloe. "We just generally and very vaguely talk about non-racialism [when] we should in fact be looking at what [it] is that separates us today. The categories are not of skin colour‚ the categories are much deeper than that and these are categories that we should be tackling‚" said the veteran journalist and former Press Ombudsman. He was speaking at the Institute for the Advancement of Journalism in Johannesburg at a seminar on issues of racism and freedom of expression."We know that some of the categories are as a result of apartheid. But we need to say what new categories have evolved... ultimately‚ the separations still exists between the 'haves' and the 'don't haves' and those are the divisions we should be looking at as a society‚" he said.South African Human Rights Commission CEO Lindiwe Khumalo‚ echoed Thloloe's sentiments."The anatomy of racism in South Africa [exists ] because we carry this baggage from the apartheid times. We look at racism as committed by people who appear to us in today's life to be out of their minds."The apartheid system in its design was structured for resilience. It was structured to last many generations... and undoing it will need an equal length of time [as] it was at a level of a philosophy‚ a philosophy that suggested people were different based on the colour of their skin‚" said Khumalo.Khumalo was flanked by political analyst Aubrey Matshiqi‚ Univiersity of Witswatersrand law professor Cathi Albertyn‚ Freedom of Expression Institute senior researcher Zororo Mavindidze and Afro-Middle East Centre executive director Na'eem Jeenah...

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