Who are they calling neo-Nazi?
MANY government delegations to the Durban Conference are engaged in an unseemly scramble to be accredited with 'official victim' status. Arab states want Zionism equated with racism. Many African countries — and a clutch of non-governmental organisations — want an apology (even reparations) for slavery from the United States and former colonial powers. South Africa's ruling party is calling globalisation the 'new apartheid'. In the context of sub-Saharan Africa. the Hutu–Tutsi problem — which has resulted in the murder of hundreds of thousands — is an elephant trampling at the gate. The Israel–Palestine problem is a mouse scurrying a long distance away. You wouldn't think so, reading the draft declaration and programme of action for the conference — which originally contained 16 clauses that refer, specifically, to Israel, Palestinians or Zionism. Explicit references to Zionism have been removed from the latest pre-conference draft. This was a last-ditch effort to prevent a United States boycott. But the specific has been replaced by allusions such as 'the racist practices of the occupying power'.
Israel-bashing is more or less compulsoy in some quarters these days. When I raised the issue of Zimbabwe — a more immediate concern to South Africa than the Middle East — in our parliament, the ANC's serried ranks screamed back, 'What about Israel?' In last year's local elections in Cape Town the temperature in one of the most Muslim wards was raised immeasurably when posters appeared with the legend 'A vote for the DA [Democratic Alliance] is a vote for Israel'. In case the message was lost, a large Star of David, covered with blood and barbed wire, accompanied the words. The ANC denied responsibility half-heartedly, but their printers produced the poster and their candidate won the seat. Thus a Jewish-Zionist card, in addition to the usual race card held in the governing party's hand, can amount to the political royal flush.
The not-so-coded identification of my party and myself reached its nadir in the provincial parliament of KwaZulu Natal. There, Dumisani Makhaye, one of the ANC's race-baiters, who is also a member of the party's inner circle, referred to my Israeli wife — whose name is Michal — as 'Israel'. In Nazi Germany all wearers of the yellow star were obliged to take the name 'Israel'. The same gentleman has referred to my party as 'neofascist', and an ANC colleague of his in the national parliament characterised my party, the Democratic Alliance as 'neo-Nazi'.
A good dose of anti-Zionism goes quite a distance. This is pretty small beer compared with the extreme racism and the ferocious violence that accompany many of its occurrences across the world. But it points to the corrosion of the impeccable non-racial credentials which were once the calling-card of the ANC. Thus while the conference agenda has airbrushed out references to 'the racist practices of Zionism', our local education minister, Kader Asmal, last week denounced the 'violence that is systematically carried out in the name of Zionism'. Only a week earlier 16 Jews had been murdered by a Palestinian suicide bomber in downtown Jerusalem.
South Africa's approach to the conference is ambivalent. This should be our big moment. Democratic South Africa — warts and all — should be a poster boy for the ultimate triumph over racism: the prodigal son of the UN returning from the apartheid wilderness. But the ANC seems determined to snatch some last remnant of victim status from the jaws of victory. Its submission states glumly, 'As we enter the third millennium, the problem of racism is as acute as ever.'
Surely not. Not at the Durban conference centre, with a fringe of multicultural festivities. Not in a country where black and white public servants are lighting 'torches of tolerance' in public hospitals that, 15 years ago, had separate entrances for patients of different races. Racism is not as 'acute as ever' in South Africa. The mace of personal dignity now rests in the hearts of all South Africans.
Tony Leon
Tony Leon is leader of the Democratic Alliance of South Africa.
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