The report alleged that white contractors were airlifted
from Palma, a town on the north-east coast of Mozambique’s Cabo Delgado
province, before its black inhabitants, after conducting interviews with 11
black survivors of the siege.
However, this has been rejected by Dyck Advisory Group, a
South African company hired to help the Mozambican government evacuate those
still trapped in the town’s Amarula and Bonatti hotels.
The report quoted a number of witnesses saying during
rescue operations the manager of a hotel that people took refuge in was seen
taking his two German Shepherd dogs in the helicopter, using space meant for
locals.
The Steve Biko Foundation said it was concerned with the
lack of psychological transformation and race relations in South Africa,
decades after the dawn of democracy.
Foundation spokesperson Bokang Pooe said Amnesty
International’s allegations highlighted that humanity must still contend with
the depraved belief that black lives are inferior to those of whites.
“The survivors’ experience during the rescue operation
speak of prejudice and racism, attitudes that have contributed to the needless
and unjust deaths of many black people.
“It is essential that society does continuous work on
dismantling these attitudes, both collectively and as individuals. This would
mean white and black people reflecting on and appraising the meaning of their
own humanity.
“Steve Biko spoke of looking forward to a non-racial, just
and egalitarian society in which colour, creed and race shall form no point of
reference,” Pooe said.
President of the Pan African Psychology Union Saths Cooper
said South African leaders and communities were deeply scarred by apartheid.
He said public policy and the education system had to be
corrected to ensure that white and black South Africans can see each other as
equals.
Cooper said it was ironic that white people constituted a
small minority, yet the greater population still lived according to Western
norms.
He also said the country’s media were also under the veil
of subconscious racism, citing that the media made a big issue of the raids in
Mozambique when big corporates and white victims were involved.
“Essentially we have not dealt with our past effectively
and we have not engaged the elephant of racism that plays a part in our lives
and our education and public policy fails to address this,” Cooper said.
He said the destructive apartheid system was also lodged in
the leadership of the country, especially those who often would hire white lawyers
to fight their legal battles.
“Black lawyers were only taken seriously when they started
complaining that they were not being used,” Cooper said.
He added that while the Truth and Reconciliation Commission
(TRC) was a watershed moment, the hearings had not done much to dislodge
apartheid in the mind.
“Generally speaking, when people deal with disaster, they
don’t check white or black, they don’t say, ’Wait a bit I want to save a white
person first.’
“Racism is a sickness where you don’t look at the human
being as a human being but you look the colour,” he said.
Lekota said the country was in a rush for political
freedom, however, the socio-psychological work was never properly dealt with.
“We were concerned with giving everyone equal rights, were
saying ’we are human like you’ and this is why we said its more a way of life,
we should be treated like human beings,” added Lekota.
The Star
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