White people in South Africa are being asked to acknowledge that they benefited from apartheid but, says Chris McGreal, many are unwilling to go that far

Wednesday December 20, 2000

For a long time it has been hard to find very many white people in South Africa who admit they actually supported apartheid. So it is probably no great surprise that so few seem keen to sign what has become known as the "guilt list" - a declaration that calls on whites to admit they benefited from racial discrimination and to take steps to make amends.
Quite a few whites will admit that they did do fairly well under apartheid. It is hard to deny the benefits of well-funded white schools compared to dilapidated black ones; the reservation of many jobs for a racial minority; and the group areas act which confined blacks to overcrowded and ill-maintained townships to keep them out of the hair of those in the plush white suburbs - except when they were required as maids and gardeners.

But there is a wholesale reluctance among the white population to admit individual responsibility for the system that imposed apartheid. Many whites will say they did not support it. Some claim they were really secret ANC supporters. It is hard to imagine where the National Party found all the votes that kept it in power for more than four decades.

Just 500 of South Africa's 4.5m whites have signed the declaration drawn up by truth commissioner Mary Burton and former African National Congress parliamentarian Carl Niehaus - two people with a long and creditable history of anti-apartheid activism. The statement is no more than an acknowledgement of what many black people take as a truism.

"We acknowledge that apartheid inflicted massive social, economic, cultural and psychological damage on black South Africans," it reads.

"We acknowledge the white community's responsibility for apartheid since many of us actively and passively supported that system. Some white people were deeply involved in the struggle against apartheid but they were very few in number. We acknowledge our debt to fellow black South Africans since all whites benefited from systematic racial discrimination. We therefore believe that it is right and necessary to commit ourselves to redressing these wrongs. We pledge to use our skills, resources and energy ... [toward] promoting a non-racial society whose resources are used to the benefit of all its people," it states.

But while few have signed, almost every white person has an opinion on it. Among those who agree with the declaration's sentiments are the writer Andre Brink, the actor Richard E Grant, and the grandson of Hendrik Verwoerd, the architect of apartheid. Most of the South African rugby team has also signed, although there are reports they were effectively ordered to do so by the management.

Others - including the former president, FW de Klerk, who released Nelson Mandela from prison a decade ago and won the Nobel peace prize - have denounced the exercise. The Mine Workers Union, which represents white miners who for many years benefited from the classification of jobs by race, dismissed the list as a new form of racism against whites.

Many of the dissenters are far from racist, and raise legitimate concerns about the point of the exercise by noting that those willing to sign are likely to be the whites who made the strongest stand against apartheid. They also say that to blame all whites, and only whites, for apartheid will reinforce racial divisions.

Mr de Klerk said he has already apologised to the truth and reconciliation commission and that "group judgement" would cause ethnic tension and prejudice. Former human rights commissioner, Rhoda Kadalie, who is of mixed-race, said it is too late for whites "to say sorry now" and warned that the declaration is aimed at silencing the government's white critics.

The respected poet, Breyten Breytenbach, who went to jail for opposing apartheid, said that after reading the declaration he went to the bathroom "for a quiet and sad puke".

But that cannot shield the reality that many whites will not sign because they resent being held responsible for apartheid, whether they voted for it or not. Large numbers believe that they atoned for that sin by giving up political power, if not economic control. And while whites cling to their large cars and homes in the face of a crime wave they blame not on the legacy of apartheid but black rule, many have come to see themselves as the new victims of the "new" South Africa.