Support for teaching tolerance

New Zealand seen by expert as good example of how to combat racism

THE ANC’s idea of formally teaching racial tolerance in schools as a way of combating racism in South Africa has been given the thumbs up by experts and the religious fraternity. The ANC in the Eastern Cape resolved at its provincial working committee meeting in Port Elizabeth on Monday to lobby curriculum developers to advise them on how racial tolerance could be included in the school curriculum.

The ANC believes that coupled with criminalising racism, actively entrenching tolerance as a value is one of the ways to build a truly non-racial society.

SA Council of Churches general secretary Bishop Malusi Mpumlwana said yesterday the government had failed to address the issue of racism after 1994.

“We cannot be surprised there’s so much racism because it was part of national duty to not just hate a black person but to kill them,” he said.

“Our argument is that we are a wounded society in one way or the other, which is why we have started a programme of healing between the older and younger generation.

“We want to bring the generations together during the national June 16 [Youth Day] event.

“We need to change the mindset because we concentrated on political transformation post-1994.

“Children must not inherit the problems of the past.

“What are we doing as churches? What are we teaching in Sunday schools?

“This is beyond just race – anything that undermines the dignity of the next person must be addressed through using schools, newspapers, churches, families and communities to teach different values.”

Only addressing racism while other problems like xenophobia were not being tackled was too narrow and populist, he said.

Wits University Centre for Diversity Studies head Professor Melissa Steyn said: “Our education system communicated racism to generations of children in [the] past, so why should we not be able to inculcate pro-social thinking and feeling?

“I think we have to go beyond tolerance, which merely suggests putting up with people you don’t like.”

Steyn said Archbishop Desmond Tutu’s description of South Africa as a rainbow nation served a purpose in giving the country “a sense of promise to tide South Africa over the most precarious time when things were very unstable and unpredictable”.

“But it had an unintended consequence . . . of making us complacent and allowed the understandings of the issues of race that emerged from the powerful position of whiteness to be continued and even strengthened.

“So the hard work of addressing our attitudes, and very importantly addressing the deep dynamics that create a racial order, still needs to be done,” she said.

Political analyst Professor Steven Friedman said any idea directed at fighting racism was to be welcomed.

He said South Africa could use New Zealand as a case study of how it was teaching tolerance among different tribes.

“Anything that can be done at the moment to address this will certainly be valuable. But it will depend on how it is done,” Friedman said.

“I have to warn that it doesn’t mean that if we include it in our curriculum, the problem will be solved. It will obviously take time. “I certainly don’t think it will do any harm.” In New Zealand, school children were taught to be more sensitive to those who did not come from Europe, he said.

“It is certainly worth looking at how they have been doing it in New Zealand.”