Racial and cultural sense of belonging remains a concern in democratic South Africa amid growing calls for Orania to be granted more recognition under the proposed Government of National Unity.
Wits University academic Thozamile Botha told Sunday World that the quest for Orania’s sovereignty would cause further divisions in the country.
This, according to Botha, as the Afrikaner nationalist town assumes that a way to exercise their freedom was to exclude other national groups within the rainbow nation from their space. He said this defeated the purpose of democracy, which among other things, advocates for inclusion.
Botha was attending the National Dialogue announcement at Nelson Mandela Sanctuary in Houghton this week.
The National Dialogue is aimed at creating a collective vision for SA under GNU and the next 30 years. Various foundations, including the Chief Albert Luthuli Foundation, Desmond and Leah Tutu Foundation, Steve Biko Foundation, Robert Mangaliso Sobukwe Trust, Thabo Mbeki Foundation and the Ahmed Kathrada Foundation, are part of the initiative.
Botha, a former civic leader and political activist, was part of the multi-party negotiations during SA’s transition that resulted in the first democratic elections in 1994. He said a group of Afrikaners brought a document during the talks in which they indicated that their participation was to also get a nation state for the Afrikaners, where linguistic and cultural autonomy would be granted for Afrikaners.
“What they meant by this was that they wanted to have their language and cultural practices acknowledged, but some were saying this should be within an exclusive geographic space,” said Botha.
“We did not agree that a culture must be exercised in an exclusive Afrikaner space. We believe that language and culture can be practised anywhere as we are free to learn each other’s languages and cultural practices.”
Botha said the Constitution recognised different cultural and linguistic groups in the context that everyone would then be allowed the freedom to exercise and preserve their cultures and languages.
“In reality, what was supposed to have happened is that Section 235 should have actually triggered a piece of legislation that describes exactly what is meant by that section, so that it guides people on how to practise their cultural values and so forth. That Section 235 is a principle, but it is not translated into an operational document,” said Botha.
