The Ideology of Racism

Implicit in this thesis is the idea that these higher human beings have a similar right and duty to maintain the purity of the human species up to the point and including the commission of the crime of genocide. One of the earliers of these racist theoreticians in our country, in the previous century, was none other than General Jan Smuts, who opposed Nazism only because it threated British imperial power. Speaking amidst the splendour of the London Savoy Hotel in 1917, Smuts had this to say:

“It has now become an accepted axiom in our dealings with the Natives that it is dishonourable to mix White and Black blood … We have felt more and more that if we are to solve our Native question, it is useless to try to govern Black and White in the same institutions of government and legislation. They are different not only in colour but in minds and in political capacity …”

More than 40 years later, when these insulting racist ideas had been translated into the apartheid system, here is what two other theoreticians of this system wrote:

“The three foundation stones of apartheid are Western culture, Christian morality and a specific racial identity. In the case of the Afrikaner, there is a powerful connecting link between these three elements. His own particular bio-genetic character is, for example, associated with a particular socio-cultural way of life and to give up either, through amalgamation with a more primitive culture or race must necessarily result in the destruction of the other.” – N.J. Rhoodie and H.J. Venter (1967)

Of course, the inanities that were being conveyed as bio-genetic and socio-cultural theory, during the second halves of both the 19th and the 20th centuries, were nothing but an attempt to justify a colonial relationship of the domination and exploitation of the Black peoples by the Whites. They had absolutely nothing to do with scientific truth.

Once implanted, and despite their exposure as fraudulent and bankrupt, these ideas seemed to take on an independent existence, nurtured by the continued practice of White supremacy in many parts of the globe. Originating from practice, they served to encourage the entrenchment, perpetuation and extension of this practice. To emphasise the point that they reflected an immutable natural order of things, the fertile human mind goes further to enrobe these racist ideas and practices with the cloak of religion.

It is indeed in this way that it becomes possible for racism to give those who believe themselves to be superior, the power to challenge the very God they dragoon to serve their interests and whom they claim to worship. Thus, whereas the Christian scriptures, for instance, see all human beings as having been created in God’s image, all racists will, for reasons that are perfectly obvious to them, retort that this cannot be so. And so it is that the foulest of crimes, against life itself, are perpetuated in the name of religion, as is the case in our own country. The idea of a civilising mission, so dear to the earlier missionaries, derived exactly from this view that the European was a higher being deposited on this planet to play God over ‘the Natives’.

From what we have said so far, it is self-evident that the practical relationship that characterised the interaction between Europe and the colonised world, today’s Third World, could not be but a hothouse of ideas for justifying this relationship. In its essence, racism is therefore about domination and works both to justify existing domination and prescribe domination as the sine qua non for the solution of all future problems.

What needs to be done?

… We assert it as an incontrovertible truth that mankind is under an obligation to suppress and punish this crime against humanity. On the basis of the experience of our own people of the horrendous practice of racism, we can categorically state it here that this crime cannot be suppressed by means of words or by persuading its perpetrators to desist from the commission of a crime.

Racism, the theory and practice of the domination of one race by another, and specifically its apartheid expression, cannot be reformed. Like Nazism, its antecedent and sister crime against humanity, it must be overthrown and uprooted forcibly, in its totality.

Oliver Tambo: The Ideology of Racism (1986)

Castro Khwela
Good morning fellow Compatriots!