The Big Read: Rubbing out the colour line

Just over six years ago I wrote what has proved to be an overly optimistic piece.

The US electorate, the vast majority of which is white, had just elected Barack Obama, a black man, as the president of the country that then had the biggest economy in the world.

It was an historic occasion, especially given the country's painful history of racism.

I was one of those swept up by the euphoria, writing on these pages that Obama's victory symbolised the end of what the eminent African-American intellectual and progressive scholar WEB du Bois had, in 1903, referred to as the "problem of the 20th century": race and racism.

Obama's triumph, I wrote glowingly, sent a message to the international community that the US had, indeed, achieved Martin Luther King jnr's dream of a state in which people "are not judged by the colour of their skin, but by the content of their character".

It was an era of hope and change, not just for the US but for all countries still grappling with a racist past and its effects.

This was especially so for us South Africans because of our shared experiences with the US with regard to racial oppression and discrimination.

But, six years down the line, there are massive protests across the US against racially motivated killings and brutality often carried out by the police.

The demonstrations erupted following a grand jury decision not to indict a police officer in Ferguson, Missouri, for shooting dead an unarmed black teenager, Michael Brown.

Tensions were further heightened when another grand jury cleared a police officer of criminal responsibility for choking to death a black man, Eric Garner.

Du Bois' "problem of the colour line" has clearly persisted into the 21st century, not just in the US but here at the southernmost tip of Africa.

As we approach the end of our 20th year as a free nation, South Africa has been hit by a series of reports about racially motivated violence.

These include the story of Tim Osrin, a swimming coach accused of beating up a 44 year-old domestic worker, Cynthia Joni, because he "mistook" her for a prostitute.

There is the story of two women prevented from entering an establishment in Richards Bay, KwaZulu-Natal, because it was "not a bar for blacks".

There are many more shocking examples of this type of violence and abuse, and if nothing is done about them we are headed for real danger.

Rightly so, many right-thinking South Africans have condemned such attacks as having no place in the non-racial democracy we are trying to build.

The latest to speak out is DA leader and Western Cape premier Helen Zille.

Her voice is important not just because of her race but because the vast majority of the reported racial attacks in recent months have happened in her province.

Zille did not mince her words when condemning such acts this week.

"I want to make one thing quite clear: Our party has no place for people like these. We are disgusted by them. Although our constitution guarantees them the right to free speech, even when they are vile and offensive, they do not have a right to associate, or be associated with, the DA.

"We do not want them. Full stop. They are free to associate with each other (within the law) - but not with us," she wrote in her column on the DA website.

"Everyone knows that the people who perpetrate or condone racist attacks are a tiny minority. Some of them will probably never come to terms with the march of progress and the increasing preference of South Africans to associate along the lines of values and not race," Zille said.

"Fortunately, incorrigible racists are a small and dwindling group."

The DA leader is quite right to call on citizens "to speak up in our daily interactions when we encounter racist attitudes".

"Unless we do, we allow the level of acceptable behaviour to sink lower, little by little. We accept that people have a constitutional right to be offensive.

''But we have a duty, in defence of our constitutional values, to confront them non-violently," she said.

But we have to do more than all of that.

Racism and racial prejudice thrive in a socioeconomic environment in which opportunities are skewed along racial lines.

If we are to bury racism once and for all we need to speed up the transformation and integration of our society.

As long as both white and black children go to schools at which all the teachers are of one racial group, and the cleaners and gardening staff of another, we are raising children to regard it as "natural" that one group is superior to the other.

In the US, despite all the gains made by the Civil Rights Movement some 50 years ago - and Obama's ascent to the presidency - failure to dismantle the racial hierarchy of society has allowed racism and discrimination to live on.

Let us not repeat here the mistakes made in the US.

If we join hands in deracialising the economy and other aspects of South African life we will ensure that, in this century, Du Bois' "problem of the colour line" will be buried.