Time for law to take a stand

Perhaps the most disturbing part of the Penny Sparrow rant is her inability (as evidenced by her statements after the outrage) to realise what she had done wrong.

Sparrow and many white people like her ignore how black people in South Africa have been , since the arrival of the Dutch settlers in 1652, systematically deprived of their land, their economic livelihood and turned into second-class citizens in the land of their birth. The extreme racial inequality in South Africa that still exists today is because of that past.

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People like Sparrow believe white people are superior and that the colonisation of Africa benefited the indigenous inhabitants rather than subjected them to unspeakable exploitation perpetrated to advance the material wellbeing of the white settlers. Some, like Cecil John Rhodes, believed that it was the English specifically who were superior to any other race .

They do not acknowledge or understand that all white people benefited from apartheid - regardless of whether they supported apartheid .

My parents immigrated to South Africa from Britain. Although my father was working class, he could become part of the middle class in South Africa simply because he was white.

I received a good education at a white government school and was able to attend a white university on the basis of scholarships and bank loans given to white people. Whatever sacrifices I made in the struggle against apartheid cannot extinguish the fact that I had a huge head start because I was classified as white. My son, born after 1990, owes his position in society to the benefits his parents were able to give him because of the privileges we enjoyed because of being white. Thanks to apartheid, white people in South Africa went to good schools, had access to tertiary education and got jobs. And children born after the end of apartheid were, thanks to the legacy of apartheid, brought up in a privileged environment and are advantaged over other South Africans.

People like Sparrow do not acknowledge how their racism is expressed in notions of racial superiority that affect the way they relate to people of other races. Belief, even subconsciously, in white superiority limits the ability of black South Africans to advance themselves.

It is distressing that 22 years after the South African miracle, when we moved from a country of white minority rule to a democratic dispensation, Sparrow's views are still harboured and expressed.

block_quotes_start We as white South Africans need to atone - to make amends - to black South Africans for what happened in the past block_quotes_end

We will not be able to unite as a country until white South Africans acknowledge the benefits that our country's past of racial land dispossession and oppression bequeathed us - that we are in generally privileged positions because of that past and at the expense of black South Africans.

Once we accept this indisputable fact, we as white South Africans need to atone - to make amends - to black South Africans for what happened in the past. Part of this atonement needs to be showing humility instead of arrogance for the past wrongs committed in our name.

A further element is also to do something as individuals to redress the racial inequalities in South Africa. This could be in the form of reparations or contributions in kind to uplift and empower underprivileged individuals or communities.

In terms of the Department of Justice's legislative programme, a bill on hate crimes is to be released for public comment in the next few months. The original intention was not to criminalise hate speech, which can already be dealt with as a civil matter in the equality courts.

But in light of the clearly outrageous racism expressed in the past week, we will need to reconsider this position and to see where the existing common law crime of crimen injuria should be strengthened to provide for penalties against blatant racism.

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We are a long way from those proud days as a country where we were acknowledged by the world as the Rainbow Nation.

Part of the problem is that many white South Africans did not want to acknowledge the injustices of the past but instead wanted to continue with their lives as if the past had not happened - that we had arrived at this time and place without any reference to our history.

As South Africans, black and white, we need to discuss ways to find each other. The government has just released a draft national action plan on racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerances for public comment. Let us reflect and debate as a nation on how we can again show the world how to combat racism.

Sparrow's views don't reflect those of all white South Africans, many of whom are making efforts to redress the inequities of the past. But, unless we as white South Africans make a more concerted effort to combat racism, we cannot hope to be part of a united nation. As whites we benefited from apartheid; now it's time to give back.

Jeffery is deputy minister of justice , but writes in his personal capacity