23 August 2001
editorial
THE Bush administration may have done the world an unwitting favour by digging in on reparations for slavery and Zionism as agenda items at the United Nations (UN) conference on racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance. What the Americans have done is force these issues, pretty much dead since the 1970s, back into the domestic and international limelight.
In the US, a small but significant sign of heightened awareness has been the renewed focus on the debt owed by Yale University, and other pillars of the establishment, to the slave trade.
There can be little doubt that the public wrangle over whether Zionism is a form of racism has coloured world perceptions of extrajudicial executions, collective punishments and other Israeli policies in the occupied territories. Because this is how the conference should be seen not so much as a decision-making affair, but as an attempt to shape world perceptions and entrench certain norms.
Conference secretary-general Mary Robinson has promised that the gathering will be "one of actions, not just words", and there may be some scope for creating "strong follow-up mechanisms to examine whether governments have delivered on the promises made".
Undertakings by member states to establish national human rights monitoring groups, along the lines of SA's Human Rights Commission, would be a useful step. So, too, would be a commitment to pass equality and antidiscrimination laws. But even if it remains largely a talk- shop one of the standard criticisms it will serve a useful purpose by reinforcing the world climate of opinion on racial intolerance.
The right tends to dismiss such normative crusades as intellectual tyranny, under the rubric of "political correctness". But attempts to stigmatise certain forms of discriminatory behaviour have had a large and beneficial effect on human affairs since the Second World War.
They have unquestionably strengthened the legal and personal status of women. Antisemitism, pervasive and in some circles intellectually chic in prewar Europe, has been pushed beyond the pale.
It is on such global consensus that enforcement mechanisms can be constructed. The War Crimes Tribunal in the Hague has its first tender roots in the 1948 UN convention on the prevention and punishment of genocide.
There can be no question of formal reparations for slavery and colonialism, for the reason that the human costs cannot be quantified or victims meaningfully singled out for redress.
What the Durban conference can do is drive home to the west the extent to which its prosperity and power have been built on centuries of plunder and violence against subject peoples.
This is not a politically correct myth, and it is vital to challenge the often unspoken idea that the depredations of an expansionist Europe were part of the march of progress. The rise of feudal Spain to world superpower in the 16th century, for example, rested foursquare on the destruction and pillage of whole civilisations in the Americas. Almost every encounter with stone-age peoples led to genocide.
SA's hope, it appears, is to harness the conference to the larger thrust for a just world order. With a keener apprehension of its historic liabilities, the west may be more amenable to demands for such reforms as third world debt relief, a redistributive trade regime and a stronger third world voice in forums like the UN security council, the Group of Eight industrialised nations, the World Trade Organisation and the International Monetary Fund. That said, the conference cannot revolve entirely around European racism and the historic crimes of the west.
A key theme will be the protection of minorities, which are just as vulnerable to victimisation in Africa and Asia as in the developed north.
This is particularly true of affluent settler minorities like the Chinese in Malaysia and white Zimbabweans.
UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, himself a Ghanaian, has called for a conference "that will look unflinchingly at every society in the world".
Annan says: "While Africa and Africans have suffered terribly from slavery and colonialism one cannot hide the fact that today some of Africa's own societies are also disfigured by ethnic hatred and violence.
"At the root of these conflicts are often prejudices and hatreds tied to ethnic and racial differences which are exploited by leaders for destructive or lucrative ends.
"From the genocide in Rwanda to the conflict in Sudan to the tensions in Burundi, the continent is living with the most devastating consequences of racism and intolerance. We must not tolerate intolerance as a predictable by-product of poverty, injustice or poor governance."
Annan makes the point that no amount of aid or trade, assistance or advice will make any difference unless the continent ends its wars.
The implications for the Durban conference are clear. Europe and its cultural offshoot, the US, should be prepared to debate slavery and other historical enormities perpetrated by the west, even if they are off the formal agenda. Third world delegates have every reason to demand reparations, in the form of a fairer crack of the economic whip.
But they will be failing in their duty to the world's downtrodden if that is all they do. A climate that stigmatises racial and ethnic intolerance is also needed among Africans.
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