What will you do for Mandela's non-racist society?

Nelson Mandela has been at the forefront of the struggle for non-racism and national unity to end all forms of apartheid in South Africa. The world will be celebrating this on his 93rd birthday come July 18.

Even though much of his political activity — including leading the military wing of the ANC, Umkhonto We Sizwe — have been concerned with liberating black people and Africans in particular, those who have gained more are former oppressors — white people.

But in Mandela’s life we learn and have inherited the important lesson of practicing non-racism.

Perhaps the biggest problem today is that bonding between Africans, Indians, Coloured and White people who were led by and lived with Mandela is not well documented.

Mandela was a freedom fighter who understood the importance of bridge building and forming non-racial coalition to unite all the people of this country for a better future for everybody.

His understanding of struggle was that it was not against white people, but against a system of government that discriminated against others on the basis of skin colour.

There is a need to highlight and mainstream the notion that the struggle to rebuild this country was not against white people. It was against a political system.

Mandela was the kind of freedom fighter who had no difficulty in risking being called a “traitor” by people like the Pan African organic intellectuals who saw him as a sell-out for hobnobbing with so-called non-Africans.

He was only interested in working with committed and dedicated people, irrespective of racial background and class, who were genuinely interested in freedom for everyone and not just indigenous Africans.

Ironically, those who have inherited Mandela’s mantle and legacy seem to have forgotten the importance of building coalitions or partnerships beyond skin colour.

The racial voting patterns in the May 2011 municipal elections, for instance, reveal that all communities are reversing the gains of Mandela to build a non-racial society. Instead, people are using racial reasoning, if there is such a thing, when it comes to identifying and voting for political parties.

There may have been instances where some minority parties like the Democratic Alliance made gains into other communities, but the perception that parties in South African politics are defined by colour has not been shaken.

The reinvention of racial laagers or camps cannot be allowed to grow and develop when this country has given us an icon of the calibre of Mandela and the ideal of non-racism.

We urgently need to find ways to converge in ways that will not only claim to liberate African people but, above all, aim to build and institutionalise a non-racial society.

The fact that the governing party, the African National Congress wants to give special preference to so-called indigenous Africans may suggest that it has fallen into the old nationalist trap of apartheid reasoning where we view people in terms of their skin colour.

South Africa is almost 20 years into freedom and democracy, and it cannot afford to have a dominant party that views citizens of this country through apartheid created stereotypes like nationality based on skin colour. This is nothing but the reinvention of apartheid and internalising its skewed values.

What has happened to those early non-racial coalitions and partnership that were built by Mandela et al in the 1950s and 1960s? Those who live today are the inheritors of everything that Mandela lived, fought, was imprisoned and released for. The question is, what are we going to do to promote and preserve that inheritance.

The so-called Tripartite Alliance has, largely, failed to maintain that coalition, especially the governing party.

Indeed, the bonds that tie Africans and white people within the ANC, for instance, will always be threatened because the latter is perceived to have gained more from the liberation struggle with the preservation and protection of their privileges.

In fact, black and white relations in this country continue to be fragile even as the ANC government pays lip service to the ideal of a non-racial society. However frayed, weakened and challenged relations may be, it is important to forge ahead with the Mandela ideal, if you like, of a non-racial and just society.

Collectively, African politicians are not helpful when it comes to efforts to strengthen the will to build a non-racial society. But it is the white constituency itself that makes it easier for the former to abdicate their responsibility and commitment to the Mandela ideal of non-racialism.

Since white people are the direct descendants and beneficiaries of racism and white supremacy, it is incumbent upon them to be seen to be championing the ideals of Mandela and fighting to create spaces where white people and black people can live together in harmony and peace.

What South Africa needs is the echoing call of Nelson Mandela when, to paraphrase, he said he not only will he fight white domination and black domination but he rejects the oppression of one by another.

The creeping race-based attitudes, policies and behavioural patterns that imprison all people into racial boxes pose the greatest threat to what Mandela fought for and tried to build in this country. What is needed now more than ever is the revival of non-racial coalitions where all people will be encouraged to show concern for fellow human beings irrespective of their colour, creed, class or affiliation.

There is an urgent need to link the plight and struggles of all oppressed people and their struggles to build the kind of society that Mandela wanted to see in his lifetime: a just non-racial society.

What are you going to do make every day a Nelson Mandela Day?