Look forward, not back

The good news is that South Africa is now the sixth-largest whisky-consuming market in the world, thanks to the expensive tastes of the black petite-bourgeoisie.

We should drink to that, I guess. Goodness knows, cheering news is in short supply these days.

This weekend, South Africa will celebrate 19 years as a non-racial democracy. Yet, judging by the depressing news reports of the past week, we have not made much progress. Our past is still very much with us.

Who would have imagined that, two decades after its formal demise, apartheid would still be such a topical election issue?

As the country gears up for next year's national and provincial polls, it is becoming clear that our past will occupy centre stage.

Ironically, this is not because of the ruling ANC's well-worn tactic of harping on the country's dark past as an excuse for its current delivery failures.

It is the opposition DA's newly launched "Know Your DA" campaign that has thrust apartheid back to the fore of political discourse.

According to the party, the campaign is aimed at highlighting the role some of its leaders and luminaries played in the struggle to end racial rule in this country.

DA leader Helen Zille said the party was forced to embark on this campaign after discovering that many potential black supporters were discouraged from voting for the liberal-leaning party by the belief that, once in office, it would "bring back apartheid".

That there are South Africans who genuinely believe that a DA national electoral victory would mean a return to our racist and shameful past cannot be denied.

Pondering Panda, a consumer insights company, yesterday released results of a survey that showed that most black South Africans between the ages of 15 and 34 believe that the DA "will bring back apartheid".

"Black respondents were significantly more likely to believe that the DA would bring back apartheid, with 52% of blacks holding this opinion.

''In comparison, 26% of Indians, 21% of coloureds, and 19% of whites believed that a DA victory at the next election would bring back apartheid. There was little difference across age and gender groups," the research company said.

This must be devastating news for Zille and her party because they are banking on the "born-frees" to help the DA reach its goal of winning of at least 30% of the national vote and gaining an additional province at next year's polls.

In many interviews since the start of the campaign, Zille has expressed shock, and sounded hurt, that there are people who honestly believe that the DA would re-enact all the laws that made South Africa a pariah state.

That the DA - the political descendant of Helen Suzman and other liberals vocal in opposing some of the racist legislation passed by the National Party government - would today want to bring back the Group Areas Act and the Immorality Act sounds absurd and outrageous.

But it is highly probable that many of those who express this sentiment about the DA, and through the Pondering Panda survey, are not talking about formal apartheid but about racial discrimination in general.

It is common to hear an African-language speaker accuse another of "having apartheid" when they actually mean that the other person is discriminatory in his attitude or behaviour.

This sentiment about the DA and apartheid might very well be an expression of an anxiety among large sections of the black electorate that the removal of the ANC from power might reverse the little gains made over the past two decades in deracialising society.

Such fears, unreasonable as they may sound to the opposition, are given credence in the eyes of many by what happens in the private business sector, where the ruling party has no control.

For instance, the Sunday Times this weekend revealed that, of the country's 473 senior counsel advocates, only four were African women. This is largely because the country's bar councils, whose job it is to recommend senior advocates for silk status, are still old boys' clubs that keep women and blacks out.

A report released by the Commission for Employment Equity last week was equally depressing. It said that the percentage of Africans holding top management positions has declined from 13.6% in 2008 to 12.3% last year. This is despite this segment of the population forming the majority of the work force.

The number of professionally qualified Africans increased from 28% to 34% during the same period.

The slow progress made by the private sector in integrating the workplace fuels the belief that there is resistance to social transformation and that, in the main, where progress has been made it has been largely due to the intervention of a predominantly black ANC government.

Instead of entering into an ill-considered mud-slinging match with the ANC about "struggle credential" and history, the DA should embark on a campaign to convince black voters that its policies would achieve much faster and sustainable deracialisation of the private and the public sectors than those espoused by the governing party.