Important note: Information in this article was accurate in 2004. The state of the art may have changed since the publication date.
Mail & Guardian (Johannesburg) - October 22, 2004
Question time was still under way as the Mail & Guardian went to press, but its opening half was dominated by a renewed attack on what Mbeki described as racist assumptions about rape and sexual behaviour generally.
Democratic Alliance health spokesperson Ryan Coetzee reminded Mbeki of his October 1 letter in ANC Today, which angrily contested the view that rape is pervasive in South Africa. How did he come to that conclusion, Coetzee asked, and what information did he have in his possession indicating that prevailing sexual practices and the attitudes of "some men" towards women did not play a role in the spread of HIV/Aids?
"In the light of [the latest HIV/Aids and syphilis seroprevalence report] which indicates that the government's fight against HIV/Aids has not reduced infection rates ... will he now play a more active role in leading the fight against HIV/Aids?" Coetzee asked.
The exchange that followed was reminiscent of the "snake oil cures and quackery" correspondence with Tony Leon in 2000, with the president insisting that he was discussing racism in the letter, and refusing to debate the issue of HIV/Aids: "Rather than debate the central issues I discussed in ANC Today, the Honourable Member Coetzee wants me to engage in a televised debate that will help some people in our country to perpetuate the very dangerous pretence that racism in our country died with the holding of our first democratic elections 10 years ago ... I for my part will not keep quiet while others whose minds have been corrupted by the disease of racism, accuse us, the black people of South Africa, Africa, and the world, as being by virtue of our Africanness and skin colour - lazy, liars, foul-smelling, diseased, corrupt, violent, amoral sexually depraved, animalistic, savage, and racist".
Mbeki got half way through his reply before running out of time, and with each follow-up question, he returned to his text rather than answering.
He said Coetzee "did not in fact ask a question", and detailed a theory of racism that describes the chain of negative associations attached to blackness as part of the "complex dialectical dance" by which white identity is established as superior.
Quoting American academic Cynthia Kaufmann he said: "Somewhere in our cultural unconscious lies the image of the brutal, animalistic, sexual, savage. This image was created long ago as part of the cultural work that was done to make whites feel better about slavery. But even now, with slavery long gone, the images are still part of our cultural system ... stereotypes of African-Americans as savage leads many whites, often against their conscious intention, to fear blacks and to mistrust them."
Quoting Shalini Bharat, an Indian social scientist, he concluded by calling for an open debate about racism that "confronts the insult ... which portrays the non-European peoples as 'a social menace'".The DA spin machine hit back, releasing a statement by Coetzee that described as "disgraceful" Mbeki's refusal to withdraw accusations of racism against journalist Charlene Smith and UNAids's Kathleen Cravero.
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