The Sydney Morning Herald
Numbers are fewer, but the value of racial peace is just as high
Date: 14/07/2000
Since arriving in Australia last week I have frequently been asked my
thoughts about local indigenous issues and the process of
reconciliation. Unfortunately I do not have a comprehensive knowledge of
the local situation but I do have first-hand experience of the
nightmare that is the result of racial division, and I believe that
South Africa may yet prove to be a model of reconciliation for others to
follow.
Nelson Mandela was the catalyst for reconciliation in South Africa.
Without him I believe reconciliation there would have been a long
time coming - if it could have been achieved at all.
Mandela was a leader.
Leadership means the capacity to lead people into new ground beyond
consensus. If you relied on general American attitudes you would
have waited a long time to emancipate the slaves. But Lincoln came
along, like Gandhi and Mandela.
Too many leaders in Western democracies wait for consensus.
South Africa amazed the whole world by devising and establishing its own
homegrown peace process, and it continues to confound some
of the prophets of doom who thought the crises and problems generated by
the apartheid era were insoluble and insuperable.
Consider the immensity of such problems: a health system and education
system designed to cater to just one-ninth of the population, the
privileged whites, was now expected by many to expand ninefold in simple
fairness to all the population. A fiscal impossibility.
And among the main legacies of the past are today's frightening
statistics in unemployment, violent crime, the HIV/AIDS epidemic and
the huge under-availability of water and electricity.
Yet the new democratic government simply rolled up its sleeves to tackle
what it could, and some impressive advances are already being
recorded on several fronts. Personally it is a treat to be able to
practise journalism in and about the new South Africa, after all those
years when the apartheid government had made it illegal for me to write
anything, or be quoted in any publication.
I see the irony of the fact that I spent 12 years urging international
economic sanctions against South Africa, and that I am now urging
massive international "reinvestment" in South Africa.
But since those heady days of 1990 there has been a total contrast in
the restrictions and repressions of the past. It has been a privilege to
experience and celebrate South Africa's liberation from the apartheid
era, and it is proving even more exciting now to witness and to help
promote South Africa's development on all major fronts.
In urging reinvestment in South Africa today, and large-scale assistance
with development, training and education, many of us believe we
are not only benefiting the new democratic South Africa, but offering
new and exciting opportunities to people abroad to be part of our
current surge to development.
The Fred Hollows Foundation is playing a critical part in this process
through its efforts to provide a high-impact blindness prevention
program in my home region of the Eastern Cape. As with all of their
programs, it is based on the philosophy of providing the training and
skills for people to help themselves - and the unshakable belief that
people everywhere deserve access to the same level of health care
that many of us take for granted.
I do not think that South Africa would have a moral claim on its friends
in Australia or elsewhere for any kind of assistance if it weren't
for the fact that most of the people of South Africa are really trying
hard to help themselves, not least the blacks who are making full use
of their freedom.
The figures speak for themselves. By 1996 already 22 per cent of the
richest South Africans were black, and by last month this year was
estimated at 25 per cent. So rather than social reform leading to
economic instability, the new South Africa is starting to make real
progress.
However, reconciliation is not just about numbers and it is certainly
not about wealth. Rather it has everything to do with equality and
opportunity.
So in the case of Australia, I would say that the fact that indigenous
Australians represent only 2 per cent of the population does not
mean that the need for reconciliation is any less important here than in
South Africa where the blacks make up 85 per cent of the
population.
Donald Woods was the editor of the Daily Dispatch newspaper in Eastern
Cape for 12 years until his arrest in October 1977 for
writing editorials accusing the apartheid government of responsibility
for the torture and death of the black leader Steve Biko.
Now based in London, he is in Australia as a guest of The Fred Hollows
Foundation.
This material is subject to copyright and any unauthorised use, copying
or mirroring is prohibited.
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