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MAPPING GLOBAL RACISMS
Futures of
Anti-Racism
Paradoxes of Deracialisation in Brazil,
South Africa, Sweden, and the UK
Nikolay Zakharov · Shirley Anne Tate
Ian Law · Joaze Bernardino-Costa
Mapping Global Racisms
Series Editor
Ian Law
School of Sociology and Social Policy
University of Leeds
Leeds, UK
There is no systematic coverage of the racialisation of the planet. This
series is the first attempt to present a comprehensive mapping of global
racisms, providing a way in which to understand global racialisation and
acknowledge the multiple generations of different racial logics across
regimes and regions. Unique in its intellectual agenda and innovative in
producing a new empirically-based theoretical framework for under-
standing this glocalised phenomenon, Mapping Global Racisms consid-
ers racism in many underexplored regions such as Russia, Arab racisms in
North African and Middle Eastern contexts, and racism in Pacific con-
tries such as Japan, Hawaii, Fiji and Samoa.
Nikolay Zakharov • Shirley Anne Tate
Ian Law • Joaze Bernardino-Costa
Futures of
Anti-Racism
Paradoxes of Deracialization in Brazil,
South Africa, Sweden, and the UK
Nikolay Zakharov Shirley Anne Tate
School of Social Sciences Department of Sociology
Södertörn University University of Alberta
Stockholm, Sweden Edmonton, AB, Canada
Ian Law Joaze Bernardino-Costa

Orchard Cottage Department of Sociology
Kendal, UK University of Brasília
Brasilia, Brasília, Brazil
Mapping Global Racisms

ISBN 978-3-031-14405-9 ISBN 978-3-031-14406-6 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-14406-6
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature
Switzerland AG 2022
This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether
the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of
illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and
transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar
or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed.
The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication
does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant
protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use.
The publisher, the authors, and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book
are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or
the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any
errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional
claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
Credit line: Ian Thuillier Photography
This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG.
The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland
Acknowledgments
We are very grateful for the research funding for this book, which was
provided by the Swedish Research Council (2016-04759). We would also
like to thank the respondents in the UK, Brazil, South Africa, and Sweden
for their time and patience in addressing our questions and for the invalu-
able contribution they have made to this research. We would like to
thank the research assistants who helped with literature searches and
interviews including Prof. Collins Ifeonu (University of Alberta); Dr.
Kavyta Raghunandan (Leeds Beckett University); and Jenny DuPreez,
Joseph Besigye, and Nadia Mukadam from Nelson Mandela University.
Many thanks also to our families for their unfailing support and
encouragement for our work on this project.
For Ian.
v
Contents
1 I ntroduction 1
2 South
Africa and the Struggle for Racial Equality: Debating
Deracialization, Non-racialism, Decolonization, and
Africanization 15
3 The
Dynamics of Racialization and Anti-racism in
Contemporary Brazil 69
4 The Retreat from Deracialization in the UK139
5 Challenging Racism in Sweden195
6 C
onclusion: Operationalizing Deracialization—Paradoxes
and Lessons239
Ian Law and Mapping Global Racisms265
R
eferences267
I ndex293
vii
List of Contributors
James Beresford University of Leeds, Leeds, UK
Ioanna Blasko Department of Social and Economic Geography,

Uppsala University, Uppsala, Sweden
Joaze Bernardino Costa Department of Sociology, University of

Brasilia, Brazil
Ian Law School of Sociology and Social Policy, University of Leeds,

Leeds, UK
Mayya Shmidt Department of Sociology, Uppsala University,

Uppsala, Sweden
Shirley Anne Tate Sociology Department, University of Alberta,

Edmonton, AB, Canada
Nikolay Zakharov School of Social Sciences, Södertörn University,

Stockholm, Sweden
ix
List of Tables
Table 3.1 Characteristics of the Brazilian racial state between 1888

and 1987 83
Table 3.2 Characteristics of the Brazilian racial State between 1888
and 2016 105
Table 3.3 Status, ministers, and exercise of SEPPIR (golden period:
2003–2016)107
Table 3.4 Distribution of eighteen- to twenty-nine-year-old youths
attending higher education, according to sex and race/color,
Brazil 1991–2019, and absolute and percentage 111
Table 3.5 Status, ministers, and exercise of the National Secretariat for
Promotion of Racial Equality—SNPIR * (decadent period:
2016 to the present moment) 116
Table 3.6 Characteristics of the Brazilian racial state from 1888 to the
present moment 117
Table 4.1 Top ten ranked narratives of anti-Muslim hatred in the UK 157
xi
1
Introduction
The overall aim of this book is to assess the nature and extent of the proj-
ect of deracialization required to counter the contemporary dynamics of
racialization across four varieties of modernity—Sweden, South Africa,
Brazil, and the United Kingdom (UK)—based on the original research
on each of the four country’s contexts. Since it began to be recognized or
identified as a problem, an assemblage of supra-national initiatives has
been devised in the name of combatting, dismantling, or reducing rac-
ism. There has been a recent shift whereby such supra-national bodies
have moved toward embedding strategies against racism within the
framework of human rights and devolving such responsibility to other
bodies at a national level. Increasing importance is therefore placed upon
National Human Rights Institutions (NHRIs), but also on Non-
governmental Organizations (NGOs), other civil society institutions,
and social movements/activists in struggles against racism in the particu-
lar national assemblages their operations cover. So, in this book we inves-
tigate the effectiveness of the roles played by the South African Human
Rights Commission, the UK’s Equality and Human Rights Commission
and the Race Disparity Unit, the Special Secretariat for Racial Equality in
Brazil, and in Sweden, the National Plan to Combat Racism and the
Equality Ombudsman.
© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 1

N. Zakharov et al., Futures of Anti-Racism, Mapping Global Racisms,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-14406-6_1
2 N. Zakharov et al.
NHRIs are constrained by external factors including the provision of

resources, lack of real independence from the powers of governments and
general functioning, and internal constraints including their purpose,
role, and relationship with racialized groups which limit their ability to
produce a radical agenda for transformation. Nevertheless, their con-
strained role, together with the activities and initiatives of other key state
agencies and departments and social movements/activists, play a vital
part in the development of national strategic approaches to countering
racism. The book will contribute to theoretical knowledge on racializa-
tion and the (im)possibilities of deracialization, produce a new data set
on contemporary interventions and institutions, and establish new prin-
ciples and practices for national projects of deracialization and anti-
racism, building on cross-national Global South/North learning.
Identifying, unpacking, and countering racial and post-racial logics in
the nation-states and civil societies remain a fundamental analytical chal-
lenge, and this is a key starting point for this book. The uprising of
#BlackLivesMatter in 2020 and the opening up of new spaces for such
fundamental critiques globally bring fresh impetus to these debates. In
this book, racialization is conceptualized as the dynamic process by which
racial concepts, categories, and divisions come to structure and embed
themselves in arenas of social life whether in thought, policy, and legisla-
tion or nation-states and regional and global systems (Goldberg 2002;
Murji and Solomos 2005; Zakharov 2015). Racism in many states has
been constructed as a moral, pathological failure which requires ‘treat-
ment’, replacing one regime of truth with another, a readjustment of
attitudes. In this book, instead, we view racism as a structural and insti-
tutionalized global phenomenon. In this sense, even as we recognize the
everyday interpersonal practice of racism, we know that racism is also an
organizational principle that constitutes practices of domination, social
institutions, law, economy, forms of knowledges, subjectivities, and so
on. In terms of subjectivities, racism plays a constitutive role whereby
public and political subjects synoptically construct themselves in relation
to prevailing narratives of racialization.
States bear primary responsibility for countering racialization with the
Government, Parliament, the Judiciary, and other bodies enacting laws,
setting policy frameworks, taking judicial decisions, and monitoring the
1 Introduction 3
impact of their policies and programs. Civil society plays a central role,
whether through the dedicated work of NGOs at the grassroots level or
through religious institutions, community service organizations, profes-
sional groups or associations, trade unions, and anti-racist movements/
activism. The media bring issues of racism to the attention of the broader
public and provide a forum for discussion and debate in either shaping or
countering racial hostilities. In the midst of all these actors, NHRIs are
unique. They exist in a dynamic position between States, civil society, and
other national and global actors, offering a purportedly neutral and
objective space in which to interact, develop racism-related laws and poli-
cies, and exchange ideas on combatting racism. Debate over the develop-
ment of effective national institutions to tackle human rights has
produced a vast literature with a key focus on the question of how to
bridge the gap between principles, formal rules, and practice (Pierson
1971). NHRIs have proliferated across the globe but relatively little is
known about those factors that underlie NHRI effectiveness (Linos and
Pegram 2017). In theorizing these institutions a combination of
design-effect and context-specific conjunctures provides an explanatory
framework for evaluating general outcomes and effectiveness across dif-
ferent states.
But the limitations of human rights frameworks in providing a coher-
ent and wide-ranging platform to conceive, address, and tackle racism are
also informed by critical race theory. The development of the UN human
rights regime occurred primarily through the search for an effective inter-
national response to racism. But the racial configuration of law and the
limitations of individual rights-based law indicate that such strategies
alone cannot address the problem of racism at its roots. Legal remedies
will never be able to provide a foundational challenge as they cannot
adequately engage with either the wider social, economic, and political
structures that re-work, re-invent, and re-shape contemporary global rac-
isms or the scars, wounds, and legacies of racial histories of genocide,
slavery, indentureship, colonialism, and Empire. The problem with
human rights is not its ideal, the collectivist vision of liberty, community,
and mutuality, but its institutionalization within a neo-liberal post-racial
racism assemblage with their associated fragilities and limitations (Sian
et al. 2013; Santos 2006). The examination of racialization and
deracialization is informed by these theoretical considerations. Racism is

not just a history of ideas. It is a global system of political projects of
domination and power which require monitoring, analysis, and measures
for redress (Bethencourt 2014; Winant 2004).
Typically, human rights approaches to racism, such as the activities
of the Office of the High Commission for Human Rights and the
European Union Commission for Racism and Intolerance, work with
somewhat problematic understandings of the problem at hand. What
unfolds here is the privileging of legal vocabularies over the critical
language of anti-racism. Preventing racism is equated with protecting
particular kinds of rights and responsibilities (e.g., see Equality and
Human Rights Commission 2015). Typically, racism is reduced to a
generic form of injustice or violation rather than a specifically racial-
ized permutation of this (Sian et al. 2013). It is positioned as inter-
changeable with other axes of discrimination such as sexual orientation,
and thus the routes to tackle them should be the same (Sian et al.
2013), notable in a movement toward equality rather than anti-racism
or racial discrimination legislation (Dickens 2007; Hepple 2010). This
‘de-historicises racism and fundamentally disempowers anti-racist
struggles’ (Sian et al. 2013:40) and has been proven to be somewhat
politically impotent.
We can thus consider alternate approaches and how they may or
may not better tackle the problem at hand. The idea of anti-racism has
gained significant scholarly attention (see Bonnett 2000; Lentin 2004)
and is probably the most employed strategy against racism, positioned
in various discourses as almost the axiomatic response. Typically, defini-
tions position it as ‘those forms of thought and/or practice that seek to
confront, eradicate and/or ameliorate racism’ (Bonnett 2000). This can
be between more structuralist and more individualized approaches to
racism (see Lentin 2004), or even more complex typologies demarcat-
ing different strains through different social movement structures (see
Bonnett 2000).
The political struggle across all the contexts in this study remains that
against racism. However, this focus on racism while it is a beneficial
antidote to human rights evasion of the very need to focus on racism can
also be said to fall short of addressing the issue at hand because of the
1 Introduction 5
local politics in certain national contexts—the re-emergence of the dis-

course of racial democracy in Brazil under the right-wing Bolsonaro
government, the declaration of the United Kingdom as a ‘post-race’
white majority state, in South Africa the call for decolonization and
Africanization in the face of rampant anti-Blackness, and Sweden’s con-
tinuing exceptionalism where racism continues not to matter. ‘Race’ as a
category is a social construct (Law 2010, 2012; Goldberg 2002, 2015)
and racism emerges from it, so the argument could be made that politi-
cal struggle should be over the category ‘race’ itself. The focus would
then be on racialization, the process whereby categories of ‘race’ are
mobilized to dictate the ordering of social life (Zakharov 2015; Murji
and Solomos 2005). The commencement of racial categorization
describes a ‘racial moment’ (Spickard 2009) from which particular forms
of racialized life unfold and the foundations of racism from which racist
institutional, structural, and interpersonal practices emerge. To struggle
over the category of race is to delay the urgent need for anti-racist action
as anti-racism struggles to combat racism within the contexts this book
focuses on. Further, deracialization is stillborn in racism’s pervasive cap-
ture of nation-states, institutions, and minds. Deracialization as a term
is employed in relation to political initiatives, campaigns, or actions
which avoid explicit reference to issues of race while placing emphasis on
issues seen as ‘racially transcendent’ (Orey and Ricks 2007). This is a
method of avoiding dealing with racism which feeds into conservative
‘post-racial’ (Lentin 2014), ‘racial democracy’, ‘rainbow nation’, and
‘exceptionalism’ politics.
The conceptualization of racism utilized in this study involves break-
ing with contemporary accounts. First, it is necessary to examine the
‘colonial genealogy of racialised governmentalities’ (Hesse 2004, p.26)
constructing racism not as an exceptional ideology located in the extrem-
ist margins, but as a social force at the core of polities, politics, and their
forms of social administration implemented through specific technolo-
gies of racial rule. This challenges an earlier hegemonic Eurocentric
account which failed to problematize Western modernity and its univer-
salist narratives of human rights and democracy. Fundamental recogni-
tion of the intrinsic racialization of liberal democracies is a key starting
point here. ‘Deep seated social and institutional change’ by states are
necessary as Sandra Fredman (2001) has argued in recognition of the

inability of human rights frameworks to defeat racism. Second, in Europe
and elsewhere racism is being reduced to a problem of human rights, and
these frameworks and discourses are not only inadequate for the task at
hand, but also working to obscure and fundamentally deny the contem-
porary power and significance of racism. This argument has been devel-
oped fully in a key output from a recent three-year European Union FP7
research project: Racism, Governance and Public policy, beyond human
rights (Sian et al. 2013). This theoretical break derives from the long soci-
ological tradition placing race at the center of the making of Western
modernity, from Du Bois, Césaire, and Fanon to contemporary theorists
including Hesse, Sayyid, Goldberg, and Winant, and this study will
examine these arguments in relation to the varieties of modernity chosen
for case study analysis. The proposal is built upon a foundational intel-
lectual framework of intersectional critical racism studies locating the
‘problem’ of racism in social, political, and economic structures that
were/are insensitive to racialized ‘difference’ and which were generally
exclusionary in effect.
This book assesses the current state of political and policy approaches
to racism in four case study contexts; the extent to which deracialization
is a focus for anti-racist action in these contexts; the difficulties in revital-
izing, reshaping, and renewing national anti-racist projects; and the
emerging political discourses of decolonization which have assumed the
anti-racist mantle. Some key questions and issues addressed in these case
studies are set out below:
outh Africa: Deracialization

S
and Decolonization
The debate on deracialization in South Africa has existed since the 1930s
with the writings and work of the New Era Fellowship in Cape Town. It
continues to be a current today within debates on decolonization, anti-
racism, and Black liberation although it is also widely critiqued by activ-
ists and academics alike. Post-apartheid South Africa is officially
committed to racial equality and promoting Black advancement,
1 Introduction 7
individually and collectively, yet many questions remain. Can the post-
apartheid state stabilize the process of political, social, and economic
integration of the Black majority? Can it maintain an official nonracial-
ism in the face of such comprehensive racial inequality? How can the vast
majority of citizens—excluded until so recently not only from access to
land, education, jobs, clean water, and decent shelter, debarred from
Africa’s wealthiest economy, and denied the most elementary civic and
political rights—garner the economic access they so desperately need
without reinforcing white paranoia and fear? How can the post-apartheid
state facilitate the reform of racial attitudes and practices, challenging
inequality, white supremacy, and the legacy of racial separatism without
engendering white flight and subversion? As Howard Winant (2002,
p. 26) has observed in the South African case, ‘how can democratic,
nonracial institutions be constructed in a society where most attributes
of socioeconomic position and identity remain highly racialized?’
Understanding these processes requires viewing South African racial
debates from a global perspective, for example, in the debates over affir-
mative action, and exploring options for local actors who seek to change
the terms of engagement as they restructure national politics and pursue
de-segregation strategies.
Brazil: Competing ‘Mixing’ and Affirmation

Political discourse around race and racism in Brazil has been historically
focused on erasing the presence of Black populations through ‘racial mix-
ing’, but, since the 1970s, has been interrupted by an increasing affirma-
tion of Black political identities. Portuguese colonization of Brazil
commenced in 1500 and initiated the traffic of enslaved people from
Africa to Brazil in the mid-sixteenth century to work on the sugar planta-
tions and later in the raising of livestock, mining, and coffee production.
This process allowed Brazil to become the largest enslavement nation in
the world at the time and it was the last, in 1888, to abolish slavery. After
abolition, the state then committed itself to an emphasis on the dilution
of ‘racial difference’ and ‘division’ through a policy of miscegenation,
white European migration, and resultant ‘whitening’ of the population.
This was the precursor to Joao Batista Lacerda’s remarks that, as a result
of a century of ‘inter-marriages’, there would be no more ‘mixed race’ or
Black people in Brazil. From the 1930s onwards, miscegenation came to
be positioned as the key mechanism in Brazilian nation-building. When
it emerged that this would not be a feasible policy, it therefore became
positioned as a marker of Brazilian uniqueness and exceptionality among
nations. Such affirmation of miscegenation and mixing allowed Brazil to
be constructed, in national imaginations, as a ‘racial democracy’, exempt
from prejudice and racism. This in turn allowed questions of racism to be
evaded. However, this myth has been challenged and somewhat weak-
ened with various enactments of affirming ‘Blackness’ and through the
historical struggle against racism and racial inequalities. A turning point
against racism in Brazilian history occurred in the late 1970s when there
were various political and cultural movements that reaffirmed Blackness,
as well as several political protests against inequalities and police violence.
This was in tandem with Brazil’s (re)democratization. As an outcome of
political activities in the late 1970s, after the 1982 elections, several
municipal and state governments established advisory bodies for the
Black population. The objectives of those advisory bodies were to pro-
mote the rights and needs of the Black population. As a result of this the
first Brazilian state institutions dedicated to the promotion of public
policies were formed. In 1995, President Cardoso established the Inter-
ministerial Task Force for the Promotion of Black People, charged with
creating and forwarding policies to support the Black population’s politi-
cal and social participation. This was further developed by the establish-
ment of the Special Secretariat for Promotion of Racial Equality during
the Lula and Dilma Presidencies which, among other initiatives and in
dialogue with activists and social movements, boosted the affirmative
action programs. After the traumatic coup d’état against President Dilma
Rousseff and the ascension of the far-right wing, racial equality policies
have been under attack. The current government has threatened some
achievements obtained from affirmative action and other public policies
to counter racism and racial inequality (Bernardino-Costa 2015). This
provides an interesting area through which to analyze anti-racist policies
and their outcomes. Despite the reach of those policies in reducing racial
inequality, the far-right wing government presents a narrative that there
1 Introduction 9
has been an upsurge of racial animosities as they attempt to avoid men-

tioning racism. By doing so, it seems that the current Brazilian govern-
ment is trying to go back to the myth of racial democracy, to remove
racism as a national problem. Contrarily to this, activist and grassroots
movements have continued to find institutional spaces from which to
implement their racial agenda. The recent Brazilian experience is a true
laboratory to study anti-racist and racial equality policies vis-à-vis dera-
cialized policies. Is the act of not naming race enough to build a post-
racial society or do we need to name race in order to face the hideous
effects of racism? Who speaks and defends deracialization policies? Which
interests are at stake?
The UK: Aggressive Racial Majoritarianism

The political and social context in the UK has been characterized by a
racialized aggressive majoritarianism, whereby those racialized as ‘white’
gain a particular primacy in institutional, political, and social situations.
In terms of the broader social realm, there has been an increasing devel-
opment of ‘cultural’ and ‘new’ racism, the growing stigmatization of
explicitly racist language and praxis leading not so much to a demise in
racist praxis but a transmutation of it into other forms. This has been
accompanied by a rise in the emergence of Islamophobic street move-
ments such as the English Defence League (EDL), as well as the growth
of populist, neo-fascist political groupings like the UK Independence
party (UKIP). Empirical evidence confirms the persistence of racism and
discrimination, whether it be in violence (Athwal and Burnett 2014) or
in educational attainment (Alexander and Arday 2015; Gillborn 2008;
Tate 2020). Alongside this, in the field of state interventions, there is a
removal of direct references to racism in state discourse and an attack on
intersectionality, Critical Race Studies, and #BlackLivesMatter by mem-
bers of the government who speak about not wanting to present as Black
victims and never experiencing racism themselves. Legislations to address
racist practices and configurations, in the form of various Race Relations
Acts (which began in the 1960s), have been replaced by a movement
away from discussions of race to a conception of equality where various
manifestations of discrimination (‘race’, sex, gender identity, age, sexual-

ity, and disability) are imbued with equivalence. As such, they can be
addressed under a single legislative banner (Sian et al. 2013). This has
culminated in the 2010 Equality Act, the most recent piece of UK equal-
ity legislation, where ‘race’ is positioned as one of nine legally ‘protected
characteristics’, tackled through a singular set of processes and mecha-
nisms. This is in tandem with a continuation, by the state, of racialized
apparatuses and policies intensifying ‘racial’ inequalities. Notable here
are, among many other phenomena, the Prevent agenda, increasingly
demonizing and regulating Muslim communities; or initiatives targeting
certain racialized migrants, for example, the Home Office’s ‘Go Home’
campaign and restrictions on recourse to state funds; as well as the con-
tinuing Windrush scandal. Rhetorically, this is compounded by domi-
nant political articulations narrating the dangers and ‘threat’ of
multiculturalism to national cohesion and security, the failure of multi-
culturalism, and various assertions of ‘British identity’ evading past and
present colonial formations. This provides an interesting context in which
to examine the roles of NHRIs, the most significant of which in the UK
being the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC), brought
into being through the 2006 Equality Act. How, it could be asked, do
they monitor racism given that they were brought into being by a state
now evading the language of racism? How is this performed given that
previous research (Sian et al. 2013) has shown the lessening focus of race
in the publications and documents of the EHRC? What is considered to
be racism, and does it include the policies of the state?
Sweden: Paradoxes of Racialization

The political and social context in Sweden is characterized by one of the
most thorough anti-discrimination legislation systems in the world.
Statistically, however, it is also one of the most racially segregated societies
in the Western world. According to sociological polls, the population in
Sweden has a very positive attitude toward diversity and migration, but
at the same time, among the OECD countries, Sweden has the highest
level of segregation in its labor and residential markets. Historically,
1 Introduction 11
Sweden shifted from a race-biology discourse, through the official ‘color-

blindness’ of its non-racist, highly utopian social ethos (in a sense that
race as a concept was abolished on the governmental level and in aca-
demia), to ‘the current era’s mourning of the past’ (Hübinette and
Lundström 2014: 425). Given its long-standing social-democratic tradi-
tions, Sweden is characterized by association-driven anti-racism. The
anti-racist public organizations are indeed rooted in civil society, but
through their funding they are also closely tied to the government.
Moreover, they are quite skeptical of other forms of funding. As was
shown in Malmsten (2007), anti-racist organizations do not really chal-
lenge the structure of society or any racialized governmentality, since they
collaborate with the government. The government and associations share
an understanding of racial problems, and therefore they are rarely in
opposition. Rather, they work with target groups believing that they con-
tribute to deracialization by influencing citizens in an anti-racist way.
What effect on deracialization strategies and practices would produce the
refusal by the state, as well as by those organizations that are specially
designed to fight racism, to address the lines of division other than
‘Swedes versus immigrants’? How can their necessity ‘to have a positive
outlook’ and to promote human rights be coupled with a program of
deracialization and anti-racism?
We have no coherent global strategy to challenge racism and no global
monitoring system tracking and tracing the spread of racism around the
world. The dismal reality of today’s regimes of denial, in the face of the
weight of racial and colonial histories and new acts and structures of
racial violence, hatred, segregation, and division, together with the dis-
mal failure of the most recent three World Conferences Against Racism:
Durban I, II, and III, demand a new response. Relational and compara-
tive analysis of these projects and assessment of the successes, failures, and
paradoxes that these cases reveal provides the basis for building some key
principles for national projects to challenge racism. This book’s focus is
on providing a foundational set of fresh, new insights to inform global,
national, and local approaches to countering racism in the twenty-first
century and how new responses could be shaped.
Dealing with escalating processes of racialization is a key challenge in
the twenty-first century. A vision of the future is in sight—the total
dismantling of racism—through the mobilization of a series of global

transformations in the way the world works. Yet, we are beset on all sides
as racism ‘surges around us’ (Balibar 2010). Regimes across the world live
in a perpetual state of denial. Racism is not here these states claim, from
China to the Russian Federation (Law 2010, 2012; Zakharov 2023),
across the Caribbean (Tate and Law 2015), the Mediterranean (Law et al.
2014), and from the Baltic to Central Asia (Zakharov and Law 2017; Law
and Zakharov 2019). Racism is over there, somewhere else, or just simply
over. Despite the advances that have been made and the dangers of over-
stating historical optimism, for many, racism is incomprehensible. There
is a chronic crisis in grasping how this social force works in the world
today. This book investigates the ways in which this global crisis has
played out and what can be done. It provides a cogent analysis of deracial-
ization and explores its value and applicability in the world today.
Deracialization is the undoing of racism, the root and branch dismantling
of the integral ways in which race has been central to both the making of
the modern nation-states and their conceptual, philosophical, and mate-
rial foundations and the contemporary operation and management of
those states (as outlined by Goldberg 2002). It is not about the silencing
of race as the process of deracialization requires positions of racial distinc-
tion, racial specification, and racial explication. It has been used to argue
for putting race to one side, refusing to recognize and acknowledge racial
distinctions, racial theories, and racist arguments, and for the construc-
tion of a non-racial humanism and allied political projects, but in our
view, this is mistaken. Not talking about racism does not dismantle racism.
Putting a central focus on being explicit about the ways in which rac-
ism operates is at the core of deracialization. Recognition, truth, acknowl-
edgment, and acceptance of the deep core of racism in states around the
world today is the first step to deracialization. Achieving even that has
been impossible in many nations where denial, rejection, and obfusca-
tion have won out. Deracialization is understood as the act of dissolving
the categories of ‘race’ and their mobilizations. This is a process whereby
the focus of action is on facilitating the reduction of racial categorization
and associated policies and practices. While there have been various deco-
lonial movements (focusing on the production of knowledge, as well as
state practices) this is insufficient to address the problem on a global scale
1 Introduction 13
as not all areas experiencing racialization have witnessed colonialism or in

particular the sorts of ‘western’ imperialist colonialism decolonial move-
ments have focused upon. Contemporary understanding of global racial-
ization processes is patchy and uneven with no systematic robust evidence
base, no systematic international monitoring, and incomplete theoriza-
tion. Principles and practices in relation to deracialization have yet to be
specified and theorized. This book will provide improved theorization
and production of new substantive evidence, from the four case study
contexts, in relation to these two sets of debates and issues.
The book provides new substantive evidence on the nature and extent
of national projects and interventions to challenge racism across four vari-
eties of modernity, Sweden, South Africa, Brazil, and the UK, drawing on
over seventy interviews with leading institutional and community actors.
We have chosen these four contexts as they provide examples of some of
the main ways in which national approaches to racism have developed.
Firstly, where national strategies and associated agencies have emerged in
a context where public discourse discourages any attempt to define
inequality along racial lines and where a range of racial reforms have been
developed largely in response to the increasingly visible Movimento Negro
(Brazil). Secondly, where national strategies and associated agencies have
emerged from official commitment to racial equality and to promoting
Black advancement, individually and collectively at the same time as the
institutionalization of nonracialism (South Africa). Thirdly, where
national strategies and associated agencies have emerged in the context of
a long-standing political and policy debate over racialization and where
there has been a gradual absorption of the struggle against racism into a
more generalized antipathy toward discriminations at a time when racial
discourse and associated hatred is escalating (UK). Lastly, where national
strategies and associated agencies have emerged in a context of new and
escalating political and policy debates over racialization at a time when
Afrophobia, antisemitism, anti-Gypsyism, and Islamophobia are increas-
ing (Sweden). Principles and practices in relation to deracialization have
yet to be specified and theorized. Cross-national analysis of these contexts
has never been carried out and this book will provide a foundational set
of fresh, new insights to inform global, national, and local approaches to
countering racism in the twenty-first century.
2
South Africa and the Struggle for Racial
Equality: Debating Deracialization,
Non-racialism, Decolonization,
and Africanization
Introduction
This chapter draws on interviews conducted in 2018–2019 in South
Africa with research participants who were activists and organic intellec-
tuals (Hall 1992) in the anti-apartheid era, post-1994 ‘Born-frees’
involved in student and community activism on decolonization and
Africanization, academic anti-racist activists, and those who work within
the human rights sector whether in NGOs or the state. It also draws on a
literature review of key events from 2019 to 2021. White supremacy and
anti-Black racism still texture South African life even within post-
apartheid times as we see in the following research participants’ views:
What is racism in a settler-colonial context like South Africa where the

poor continue to be black and the rich continue to be white? What is rac-
ism in a country that has a history of colonialism, also apartheid—a differ-
ent form of colonialism? I think where commissions start their work is
1994. Anything before that, which actually are the driving events of the
1994 moment are discarded, and then you get a warped understanding of
© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 15

N. Zakharov et al., Futures of Anti-Racism, Mapping Global Racisms,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-14406-6_2
what racism is, because everyone believes in this non-racialism and rain-
bowish notions of South Africa today. (Dayile 2019, Interview)1
In post-apartheid South Africa it’s the continued delusion of white superi-

ority that’s very important for people to hold onto because it’s had very real
material benefits in South Africa to be identified as white, to be included
in whiteness so that they can share in those material benefits. (van der
Westhuizen 2019, Interview)2
Racism in South Africa is the belief that white people are superior to Black
people. It changed after apartheid from white terror to white hegemony.
Racism is structural, it’s about institutionalized forms of discrimination,
dehumanization, forced assimilation, and some people are still living on
the underside of the society. Therefore, a Black government can perpetuate
racism. (Madlingozi 2019, Interview)3
The extracts above on the topic of racism illustrate the racial divide
dominating South African politics, that between white minority eco-
nomic privilege and Black majority economic disadvantage. They remind
us of South Africa’s white settler colonial past which continues to influ-
ence the contemporary life of anti-Black institutional racism in the
majority Black state. They tell us about the importance of looking to
history for lessons on the present and future as anti-Black racism did not
begin in 1994, nor did it end with South African democracy. Anti-Black
racism continues to dehumanize because its institutionalization and
long-term psychic/economic/political/social life mean that post-1994
Black governments perpetuate it because of continuing coloniality (Kelly
2000). Coloniality and anti-Black racism recreate a state against itself and
its majority constituents.
Racism structures South African life so that the ‘non-racialism and
rainbowish notions of South Africa today’ are inactive socially and
politically and continually deactivated through institutional inertia.
1
Azola Dayile, Media Monitoring Africa.
2
Professor Christi van der Westhuizen, Centre for the Advancement of Non-Racialism and
Democracy (CANRAD), Nelson Mandela University (NMU).
3
Tshepo Madlingozi Centre for Human Rights, Council for the Advancement of the South African
Constitution.
2 South Africa and the Struggle for Racial Equality: Debating… 17
Non-racialism and the ‘rainbow nation’ are non-performatives (Ahmed

2006) because of the pre-1994 events which mean that there is still a
pervasive delusion about and institutional activation of white supremacy.
Although memories of apartheid might fade because of the discourse of
non- racialism channeled through rainbowism and the Truth and
Reconciliation processes, anti-Black racism is viral because the nation
continues to be divided on racial lines. Apartheid legislation has been
done away with, but the responsibility for the emergence of the ‘rainbow
nation’ and reconciliation became Black responsibilities ‘as a way of man-
aging Black anger’ while there is still ‘no social cohesion and no change in
terms of race relations’ (Fatyela 2018, Interview).4 Lack of social cohesion
and white privilege mean that ‘racism is inevitable. You know, to racialize
and to see race and to be very aware of it especially in our context, with
our history, is very present. It’s not something that goes away not even
with training or anything like that’ (Van Reenen 2018, Interview).5
Apartheid also produced race-scapes which continue ‘in infrastructure
and architecture that reinforce white privileged racialized realties, or that
reinforce exclusion which is racialized within the poorer facilities of
township spaces’ (Mtimka 2019, Interview).6
As a concept, politics, worldview, and anti-racist strategy, deracializa-
tion is known/unknown, critiqued/valorized depending on political gen-
eration in terms of involvement in anti-apartheid struggle, decolonization,
and Africanization movements. This chapter looks first at the Black-
generated discourses on non-racialism which emerged from anti-racist,
anti-colonial activism from the 1930s to the twenty-first century. It then
turns to the current failings of state apparatuses, legislation, and initia-
tives to stem the tide of anti-Black racism, before focusing on what con-
temporary ideas on re-racialization and social justice transformation
within the discourses and politics of Africanization, decolonization, and
twenty-first century non-racialism can tell us about the (im)possibility of
deracialization in South Africa. It shows that South African approaches to
Black liberation and anti-racism, variously termed non-racialism, decolo-
nization, and Africanization drawing on Steve Biko’s Black Consciousness,
4
Awetu Fatyela, Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) student activist.
5
Dr. Dionne Van Reenen, University of the Free State.
6
Ongama Mtimka, Lawula Group.
are intertwined and critiqued. However, deracialization as a concept and

politics has limited resonance today, perhaps because of its links to the
apartheid state. Indeed, for Professor Nomalanga Mkhize (2019,
Interview),7 ‘South Africa has always been deracialized because you can-
not run a majority population without its own people. Deracialization
was started in the corporate sector by PW Botha. A lot of people that
ascended into positions of power in these companies, post-94, were peo-
ple who had been there in the 80s under apartheid. So deracialization is
the same as the rainbow nation’. Nonetheless, Black liberation through
anti-racism recognized by a variety of reparations approaches continues to
be an important call within Black political, communal, and social life in
South Africa. Let us turn to Black organic intellectuals’ development of
the philosophy, politics, and practice of nonracialism in 1900s Cape Town.
on-racialism: From 1930s’ Cape Town

N
to Twenty-First-Century South Africa
The early African National Congress (ANC) was established in 1912 as
the South African Native National Congress (SANNC). It established
non-tribalism as a formative value for the Black oppressed and a counter-
discourse to colonialism around which a broad constituency of South
Africans could form a unified political movement (Suttner 2010;
Manganyi 2019). In 1937, Cape Town organic intellectual activists estab-
lished the New Era Fellowship (NEF), disrupting ideologies of inherent
Black inferiority and white superiority. They rejected colonialism, saw
race as a fallacy, and racialized hierarchies as oppressive. NEF study cir-
cles catalyzed new political formations, civil society, and social organiza-
tions (Soudein 2019:7).
NEF developed an understanding of white racial hegemony as a politi-
cal and ideological project and illustrated how race-thinking results in
mental enslavement. Race as false, racial oppression and white suprem-
acy, and the psychic damage of anti-Black racism, formed the basis of
their thinking around non-racialism as necessary for liberating South
7
Professor Nomalanga Mkhize, NMU.
Africa from apartheid. The NEF’s aim was to use education in the 1940s
and 1950s to end the mental enslavement of racially oppressed peoples,
producing liberated humans. These new, modern citizens of South Africa
would be constructed through the knowledge work of Cape Town’s teach-
ers (Soudein 2018, Interview). For the NEF, understanding non-racial-
ism was important for understanding colonialism and apartheid through
the process of re-education which countered existing knowledge streamed
through white supremacy, a South African society structured through
racial dominance, and institutionalized racism. Thus, ‘non-racialism in
the NEF built a counter-totalising world view in opposition to domina-
tion beginning from the “non-sense” of race’ (Soudein 2019:18).
While aware of the effect race had on society, by the 1950s they ceased
referring to themselves in existing racial terms—‘Blacks’, ‘Coloreds’, and
‘whites’. As such, they were ‘purposefully “post- racial” [because] produc-
ing a “non-racial” person was their goal’ (Soudein 2019:167). However,
NEF had a blind spot in terms of patriarchy, Africanness, and class,
within its focus on the ‘unconditional unity of the human race’ (Soudein
2019:8). NEF ceased to exist in 1960, but its impact remained in the
‘non-racialism’ project being institutionalized today, for example, in the
Centre for the Advancement of Non-racialism and Democracy
(CANRAD) at Nelson Mandela University (NMU). Non-racialism also
continues to have twenty-first-century currency as a political project car-
ried in ‘rainbowism’ and in the political orientation and philosophies of
former anti-apartheid activists.
The Non-European Unity Movement (NEUM) was NEF’s sister orga-
nization. For Crain Soudein (2018, Interview) both organic intellectual
organizations were developing ‘Southern Theory’. The NEUM was, ‘the
first organization to develop a political programme in the country, that’s
in ‘43 called the “10-Point Programme”. The “Freedom Charter” came
10 years later in 1955. The NEUM became the New Unity Movement
between ‘83 and ’85 and now it is just referred to as the “Unity Movement”.
NEF intellectuals influenced thinking on Robben Island and so the ANC
emerged from the island and at least on the surface embraced non-
racialism as a concept’ (Zinn 2018, Interview).8 The NEF’s and NEUM’s
8
Alan Zinn, Director, CANRAD, NMU.
non-racialism was also about ‘non-collaboration with apartheid, [theirs

was an] anti-imperialist and anti-racist position. It’s the whole question
of one nation because the apartheid government was trying to divide us
into different nations, different ethnic groups’ (Zinn 2018, Interview).
Unity against white supremacy and colonialism was central to the end
of apartheid through the work of the Unity Movement. Non-racialism
was taken into the Republic’s Constitution by the ANC and was explic-
itly named as such through ‘the rainbow nation’ metaphor. As a meta-
phor, ‘the rainbow nation’ shouldn’t be seen ‘as a description of what was
happening on the ground, [but] as the elevation of what was possible, if
we work really very hard to come together as people. And I think that
aspirational notion of the rainbow nation still appeals, despite having a
very fractured nation’ (Jansen 2019, Interview).9
In post-Apartheid South Africa, the discourses of modern racialization
were pulled together under the umbrella term ‘Rainbow Nation’, coined
by Archbishop Desmond Tutu, to engender transracial unity as a South
African nation despite diversity, and its racially fractured and apartheid
past. After South Africa’s first democratic election in 1994, former
President Nelson Mandela elaborated on the Rainbow Nation concept as
a non-racialism approach to a nation in which all belonged. He said,
‘Each of us is as intimately attached to the soil of this beautiful country
as are the famous jacaranda trees of Pretoria and the mimosa trees of the
bushveld—a rainbow nation at peace with itself and the world’ (Mandela
1994). Mandela is also ‘quoted as saying, “We have no whites, we have no
Blacks. We only have South Africans”’ (Suttner 2010: 523).
This ‘out of many one’ sentiment resonates with other British colonies
on independence, which also had multi-racial societies formed through
colonialism, Indigenous dispossession, enslavement, and indentureship,
fractured by white hegemony and racial inequality (Tate and Law 2015).
South Africa’s fair democracy was stillborn even though ‘the country did
need a way to describe itself other than the apartheid state. So, in that
sense, it’s a useful kind of framing for, helping people move their minds
into a very different, almost a psycho-social mind space and life but I
9
Professor Jonathan Jansen, University of Stellenbosch, South African Institute of Race Relations,
South African Academy of Science.
think it’s a very empty vacuum kind of idea. But in terms of just helping
to constitute a different imagination, it’s a very evocative description of
the alternative to apartheid’ (Soudein 2018, Interview).10 The rainbow
nation reproduces the nation as psychically different from apartheid’s
racial categories but that is the extent of the change that it has engendered.
Unlike the NEF’s non-racialism, rainbowism is embedded within
apartheid’s idea that identities can only be seen in racial terms, individu-
als then position themselves in ‘racial inevitability’, and ‘race has been
manipulated to function as the total explanation’ for societal structura-
tion, inequalities, and the way the world is (Soudein 2019:10–11).
Rainbowism was repeatedly critiqued by participants as a failure, a meta-
phor, a national anti-racist strategy, and a reflection of ‘how people engage
interpersonally and as an integrative form’ (Soudein 2018, Interview). It
was seen to have failed because of existing racialized ‘contestations on
histories, presents, and futures’, in a situation where reconciliation, social
cohesion, and new social identities are needed within ‘equalized distribu-
tive mechanisms of the state’ (Keet 2019, Interview).11 These contesta-
tions around rainbowism’s failures have been inherited by the ‘Born
Frees’, that is, those born after 1994. ‘Born Frees’ did not experience the
hardships of apartheid but are party to a different set of challenges and
experiences borne by rainbowism. While freely interacting with other
racialized groups, they are still faced with its legacy of race-scapes and the
lack of social mobility that comes with poor education, unemployment,
and transgenerational poverty.
Based on its newly ratified Constitution, in 1996 South Africa’s gov-
ernment touted ideals of freedom and liberty for all South Africans. For
these to be implemented there were new school curricula aimed at pro-
moting democratic and constitutionally based values. The Born Frees
were supposed to be the embodiment of South Africa’s newfound democ-
racy. However, survey data points to post-apartheid generations being
much less committed to rainbowism or non-racialism than preceding
generations (Mattes 2012). This results from the continuing racialized
Professor Crain Soudein, Chief Executive Officer, Human Sciences Research Council.
10
Professor André Keet, Chair Ministerial Oversight Committee on Transformation in South

11
African Universities, Director CriSHET, NMU.

inequality in contemporary South African society in which ‘the colour of

privilege and wealth continues to be white’ (Mzinelli 2018, Interview).12
By 2011, census figures showed that the Born Frees accounted for
approximately 40% of the total population, a post-apartheid generation
of citizens. Demographic change and the transformation in the political
system in 1994 promised future renewed citizenship because of a genera-
tion with the values of a ‘new’ South African citizen. These newly emerged
values were to have re-educated a society on democratic social norms, but
civil liberties, political freedom, and many forms of democratic participa-
tion did not flow organically from legislation. The difference in the con-
tent, quality, and quantity of education also created a new experience for
Black South Africans, resulting in higher levels of complexity regarding
their human rights as citizens. Thus, the Born Frees envisage issues differ-
ently from earlier generations (Mabry 2013) as shown in critiques by
student activists in the decolonization movement.
These activists have developed an evolving critique of rainbowism’s
non-racialism as ‘a way of pacifying people making them not think criti-
cally about the kind of society that we want’ (Fatyela 2018, Interview).
They have also re-racialized South Africa’s political life based on Black
experience of racialized disadvantage and white supremacy even while
using the NEF’s non-racialism idea that ‘we are all human beings. Race
biologically doesn’t exist even though it has been elevated to a fictitious
truth and has become an ordering principle in social, political and eco-
nomic life which determines how we live as people. It exists and it keeps
on shaping our lives as people. How one would turn out to be is funda-
mentally influenced from the racial background that they come from’
(Bizani 2019, Interview).13 The politics of non-racialism contained in
rainbowism has failed in South Africa because of continuing white
supremacy and Black disadvantage. They produce ‘tensions along racial
lines’ so even if non-racialism is believed in as ‘an end’, continuing racial
disadvantage means that ‘we [cannot] turn a blind eye to what is happen-
ing now and how our lives are shaped and influenced by these social
constructs such as race’ (Bizani 2019, Interview). Indeed, a Black
12
Pedro Mzinelli, ANC student activist.
13
Aphiwe Bizani, activist.
majority state keeps white supremacy active within South Africa as we

can see in the connection of Marikana with colonialism, enslavement,
and capitalism’s being-white-in-the-world, made by Njabulo S. Ndebele
(2018: 137):
The trajectory of what [Africans] became began some 150 years ago and led
them all the way to Marikana on 16 August 2012 where the South African
Police Service shot protesting workers, killing 34 and wounding 78 of
them. What does ‘being-white-in-the-world’ on behalf of capital do when
workers who make ‘unreasonable’ demands to not return to work, and thus
adversely affect the production of platinum that could force the mine out
of business? Arrest them. Lay them off. Shoot them. The analogy with
captured slaves is not far from the mind. The analogy has been relevant for
over a century. It has to give way.
The ‘fundamental problem is a world where white people are on top,

and Black people still at the bottom. And from a decolonization, decolo-
nial liberation perspective, you cannot have a postcolonial society where
the historical oppressors or beneficiaries don’t lose anything’ (Madlingozi
2019, Interview). Although South Africa endeavored to do away with
racism through rainbowism, to deracialize the country through that and
the NEF’s foundational non-racialism, political leadership continues to
support the white minority and Black elites to ensure their political and
economic power positions are maintained. The continuing negative
impact of economic disparity on the majority Black population can be
seen in townships, employment figures, Black transgenerational poverty,
and the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) and ANC-backed motion for
land expropriation without compensation being debated from 2018.
The motion was passed with a vote of 241 to 83 of the members of par-
liament present for the vote (Goba 2018, Interview). This has huge ramifi-
cations for the country and caused disquiet as it was being considered by
the Constitutional Review Committee in 2019. However, it symbolizes a
hard-won victory for Black South Africans who have suffered cyclical eco-
nomic disparity as a result of being forcibly removed from their legally
acquired land, or not being allowed to obtain land at all. White farmers
control up to 73% of arable land in South Africa, the land question is
deeply racialized, and the EFF has taken a populist approach to land reform
(Satgar 2019). The EFF outline in detail their seven-part argument for the
‘Expropriation of land without compensation for equitable redistribution’
on their website. They propose that ‘all land should be transferred to the
ownership and custodianship of the state in a similar way that all mineral
and petroleum resources were transferred to the ownership and custodian-
ship of the state through the Minerals and Petroleum Resources
Development Act (MPRDA) of 2002’ (Anon 2018).
When the ANC came to power, it acknowledged that a small minority
of Black people could buy land in the free market (Ngcukaitobi 2021).
The proposed Reconstruction and Development Plan (RDP) had prom-
ised a ‘fundamental land reform programme’, ‘demand driven’, and
mindful of the need of rural dwellers for tenure security. Popular belief is
that lands and farms were seized from Black South Africans during apart-
heid. Owners are primarily white farmers who inherited their farms from
their ancestors and only a few white farmers purchased lands in post-
apartheid South Africa (Smith 2019). White farmers criticize govern-
ment land policy for favoring Black citizens and being detrimental to
food security/agricultural production (Satgar 2019). Satgar argues that
incidents like #blackmonday have resulted in the reactivation of Afrikaner
charisma while, on the other hand, the EFF’s Malema’s Africanist politics
on the land question has racialized national discourse. Malema maintains
that the land question has to be resolved in the context of failing corporate-
controlled food systems.
Since 1994, Black government ministers have acquired two to five
large farms apiece. However, this received scant attention in academic
and popular debates (Smith 2019). Satgar (2019) notes that a Black capi-
talist class has been in the making in the nexus of the State-Market and
the ruling party. He argues that South Africa’s transformative constitu-
tionalism has been reduced to liberal constitutionalism articulated with
national liberation ideology and its commitment to being a well-governed
Afro-Neoliberal state. The country’s ‘liberal democracy’ works only for a
minority. Thus, between electoral cycles, there are widespread social pro-
tests and increasingly violent civil struggles to gain recognition for every-
day suffering (Satgar 2019).
While Akinola (2020) notes that the South African state has made
strides in correcting racial inequality associated with land ownership
inherited from the Apartheid regime, the inequity in land distribution

and conflicts over land persist. The program of land redistribution has
not worked satisfactorily for more than twenty years and requires policy
adjustments (Cordeiro-Rodrigues and Chimakonam 2020). The land
reform process has been dogged by corruption. The ‘willing buyer, will-
ing seller’ policy error in the reform exercise was condemned, particularly
during Zuma’s presidency, leading to the introduction of Land
Expropriation Without Compensation (LEWC). In 2018, the Special
Investigating Unit (SIU), one of South Africa’s anti-corruption institu-
tions, presented findings and recommendations on fraud, corruption,
and maladministration in the land reform program. This was followed by
a 2019 constitutional court ruling that lambasted the state for constitu-
tional insecurity and placing the country’s future in jeopardy, because of
the handling of the land question. However, LEWC was picked up by
Cyril Ramaphosa’s presidency as an attractive proposition and policy
statement to mobilize Black voters (Ngcukaitobi 2021). The ANC’s sup-
port of LEWC attempts to obscure the government’s failure to eradicate
poverty, rescue the economy, deal with housing problems, and respond to
poor service delivery (Akinola 2020). However, LEWC is fundamentally
about justice and reparation (Ngcukaitobi 2021). Reparations like
LEWC are necessary in the decolonization process where, ‘the future of
South Africa does not lie in the relationship between “Blacks” and
“whites”, but in what happens in the townships and rural areas where the
vast majority of South Africans live, and who, when they have created a
new world for themselves and all who live in the country, will no longer
be “Black” but citizens of South Africa’ (Ndebele 2018:138). Constitution
and legislation do not end white supremacy or racism.
nti-racism: Constitution and Legislation

A
Do Not Work
The 1999 report from the UN Special Rapporteur on Contemporary
forms of Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia, and Related
Intolerance observed that South Africa had a culture of violence and eco-
nomic, social, and political imbalances stemming from its apartheid past.
Further, closed mentalities had been produced by the sequestration of the

land and the separation of ‘human relations’ caused by the Native Land
Act (1913), the Black (Urban Areas) Consolidation Act (1945), the
Group Areas Act (1950), the Prohibition of Mixed Marriages Act (1949),
and the Immorality Amendment Act (1950). The Mandela government
established a new Constitution for a democratic and non-racist South
Africa and the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) to effect
reparations for and truth-telling about past wrongs. The government’s
Employment Equity Act (EEA) aimed at affirmative action to address
historic disadvantages in employment experienced by designated groups
(Puwar 2010). Designated groups are ‘Black people, women and people
with disabilities’. ‘Black’ meant ‘Africans’, ‘Coloreds’, and ‘Indians’. Job
applicants must ‘racially’ classify themselves even if they do not identify
with any of the EEA’s racial categories. In most official documentation
South Africans are required, for statistical purposes, to indicate their race
as African, Indian/Asian, Colored, or White, although the repeal of the
Population Registration Act has meant there are no legal definitions
of ‘race’.
The Mandela government set up a Human Rights Commission and
three other institutions to protect South Africans’ human rights: the
Public Protector; the Commission for the Promotion and Protection of
the Rights of Cultural, Religious and Linguistic Communities; and the
Commission on Gender Equality. Post-apartheid South Africa began the
reparations process, much needed after years of apartheid’s repression and
violence: individual reparation for victims of human rights violations;
symbolic reparation through monuments, exhumations, and burials; and
the renaming of streets and facilities (documents-dds-ny.un.org/doc/
UNDOC/GEN/G99/103/91/PDF/G9910391.pdf? Open Element.
Accessed 20/10/2019). However, for Tshepo Madlingozi (2019,
Interview), Chief Executive Officer of the South African Human Rights
Commission (SAHRC), ‘public policies are ineffective because they are
based on wrong assumptions about what the problem is and they flow
from a tool that can never dismantle racism, our constitution, which is
very individualistic and liberal. The same constitution is used to defend
Afri-Forum. Our public policies flow from the ANC’s non-racialist
assumption so we can never dismantle racism if we don’t see race. We
need to continue to be proactively antiracist’. This view of the difficulty

with dismantling racism from the state level is supported across the
research participants, as we see in the following comment:
I don’t think that the UN, other than the World Conference Against
Racism that took place in this country in 2001, has really done much work
in South Africa on issues of racism. A lot of work around issues of racism
as it impacts refugees and migrants, ja. But on issues of racial division and
racism amongst South Africa’s race groups, they haven’t really done much
other than compel the country to finalize its national action plan against
racism, which was one of the outcomes of the World Conference, and
unfortunately South Africa has not yet finalized it and there I think in this
year [2019] we are meant to be tabling it at the UN and hopefully that will
be done. (Balton 2019, Interview)14
The Special Rapporteur noted a rise in xenophobia in 1999 and it

continues to blight South African life. Xenophobia relates to the dis-
crimination and intolerance that migrants are exposed to daily (Crush
et al. 2017). Migrant and refugee businesses in the informal sector are
targeted and Zimbabweans are among the most disliked migrants, even
though most can work legally in the country (Crush et al. 2017). South
African businesses are left untouched while migrant and refugee busi-
nesses are attacked particularly in low-income areas and informal settle-
ments, involving looting of stock, physical assaults, and hate speech. It
could also be that such xenophobia is orchestrated by ‘violent entrepre-
neurship’ by South African competitors. Xenophobic attacks are also
started from anti-government service delivery protests which then
descend into ‘Black on Black’ ‘violence and looting’ (Crush et al. 2017).
Xenophobia ‘has economic reasons, but that attachment of the outsider
to Black skin comes directly from South African history. So Black South
Africans can treat other Black people as others, because there is a history
of Black-skinned people being treated as inferior others in this country’
(Mkhize 2019, Interview). Thus, xenophobia is another remnant of
apartheid. African migrants are a new category of non-whites
characterized by the struggle to gain legal documentation, reminiscent of
14
Neeshan Balton, The Ahmed Kathadra Foundation.
how ‘Blacks’ were treated under Apartheid. Before 2019, the number of
violent incidents increased in 2008 and 2015 (BBC News 2019). From
March 25 to April 2, 2019, a sharp increase in xenophobic attacks
occurred, amidst political tensions leading up to the national elections.
On May 25, 2019, with another wave of xenophobic attacks, the gov-
ernment issued its five-year National Action Plan to Combat Xenophobia,
Discrimination and Racism (NAP). NAP aims to raise awareness about
anti-racism measures, increase their effectiveness, improve access to jus-
tice for victims, and their sense of dignity while achieving justice and
equality. In September 2019, a national shutdown was organized, calling
for foreigners to leave. Roads and highways were blocked; schools, busi-
nesses, and taxi ranks were closed in Gauteng, KwaZulu Natal, and the
Western Cape. The shutdown became violent claiming at least 12 lives,
including South Africans, businesses were looted, and homes and shops
owned by foreign nationals torched (Bornman 2019). Human Rights
Watch (2019) asserts that the plan’s failure to address the lack of account-
ability for crimes is a major challenge in dealing with xenophobia.
Foreign nationals are the ‘non-whites’ of the democratic dispensation
in South Africa and have increasingly become the scapegoats for govern-
ment failures (Ekambaram 2019). Kerr et al. (2019) dismiss the ‘new
racism’ idea of xenophobia as Black-on-Black racism owing to its reliance
on the citizen-migrant distinction and its failure to account for non-
African targets like Asian shop owners. The economic question does not
explain why foreigners are specifically targeted, but the rich and the
whites are not attacked (Kerr et al. 2019). Thus, the economic crisis does
not account for how the ‘foreign citizens’ distinction gained its current
significance (Kerr et al. 2019). Kerr et al. (2019) reject the assertion that
xenophobia is a by-product of a new South African citizenship/nationalism.
Apartheid excluded all Blacks but the post-apartheid state distinguished
between those who qualify for state assistance and who do not. This
points out the historical relationship between citizenship and the ability
to make claims on the state. However, xenophobia is also justified by
South Africans who are themselves excluded from citizenship rights.
Xenophobia is enacted in violence through meaning-making (Kerr et al.
2019). Xenophobia’s power shapes relationships between groups in a
practice born out of a response to institutionalized white racism that
equated Blacks with a non-urban, working-class, non-citizen.
Chenzi (2020) asserts that social media and fake news do not cause
xenophobia in South Africa but act as a vehicle to spread tension, escalat-
ing the crisis. Hewitt et al. (2020) also consider that xenophobia is an
unintended consequence of immigration policy, and there is a need to
handle xenophobia regionally. Economic inequality means foreign
nationals have been on the receiving end, but nationals also turn on each
other, and play the race card in terms like ‘state capture’, ‘corruption’, and
‘white monopoly capital’. Due to the Covid-19 lockdown and global
pandemic, xenophobic violence decreased in 2020 and 2021. However,
anti-South African Chinese racism has emerged as they have been blamed
for Covid-19’s spread.
The Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) was established
through the 1995 Promotion of the National Unity and Reconciliation
Act, No. 34, following intense negotiations between the ANC and the
National Party. The role of this commission and its activity were overseen
by three separate committees—the Human Rights Violations Committee,
the Reparation and Rehabilitation Committee, and the Amnesty
Committee. During apartheid, violence and the abuse of Black people’s
and People of Color’s fundamental human rights were commonplace as
part of the institutionalized racist state terror machine. The Human
Rights Violations Committee investigated Apartheid’s violations through
public hearings. Victim testimony allowed victims and perpetrators to
truth-tell, cope with past abuse and oppressive histories, and enhance
reconciliation through the admission of guilt. The public hearings were
an achievement for Black victims for the validation of their human rights.
The Reparation and Rehabilitation Committee recommended policies
for reparations for human rights violations through payment, rehabilita-
tion, restitution, and recognition.
The Amnesty Committee focused on applications from victims of past
government abuse, or who committed crimes in support of the ANC and
met the specific criteria established in the Act. The very first transcript
recorded from amnesty hearings in May 1996 detailed the 1990 murder
of a former Baphokeng tribal leader at the hands of ANC members who
sought vengeance for the corrupt redistribution of tribal lands which
constituted 80% of the world’s platinum mining at the time (Truth and
Reconciliation Commission 1996). South Africans also learned from
Dr. Daan Goosen, the project lead for eliminating the ANC, that the
government had initiated research on a bacterium that would kill or ster-
ilize Black people (Special Rapporteur 1999).
However, the TRC is seen as ineffective societally, structurally, and
institutionally because of the ‘deep wounds in the country which meant
that we should have gone through proper healing more than just the
TRC happening. Perhaps the recommendations of the TRC could have
been implemented, we should have redressed some of our institutions,
rather than saying ‘rainbow nation’ and changing a few things here and
there and it would all be kumbayah, without actually continuously doing
the work’ (Nqaba 2019, Interview).15 Further, ‘there was no justice in the
TRC in terms of addressing the issues, there’s still a lot of separation and
you see it in the socio-economic status of the different people in the
country’ (Goge 2019, Interview).16 The TRC could not deliver the social
justice transformation necessary because it was not established as an anti-
racist organ or to implement the fundamental changes necessary institu-
tionally or societally. Its aim was to enable acknowledgment of and
recompense for past wrongs for the nation to live uneasily with itself. This
uneasiness persists because racial inequality continues.
For example, in July 2020, Lungi Ngidi, a member of the South
African cricket team, was asked what he thought about #Black Lives
Matter. He responded, ‘It is definitely something we would be addressing
as a team. And if we’re not, it’s obviously something that I would bring
up. It’s something that we need to take seriously, like the rest of the world
is doing’ (Hain and Odendaal 2020). His comments were controversial.
Several players were angry, others disagreed outright, while others
lamented the lack of support for white farmers’ plight (Vahed and Desai
2021). A number of cricket players and administration voiced their sup-
port, demanding that the South African Cricket Board take a stance on
the matter. In the still ongoing conversations, cricketers of color have
come forward with their experiences of racism with no effort being made
toward racial transformation. Black players have long been known as
‘quota players’. The impression being that they are quota not skill
15
Patronella Nqaba, Nelson Mandela Foundation, Atlantic Fellows for Racial Equity.
16
Zilondiwe Goge, activist.
selections, even when statistics show otherwise. This idea was often sup-
ported by media reports and actions of senior cricketers (Dove et al.
2021). Showing commitment to transformation, Cricket South Africa
(CSA) appointed Advocate Dumisa Ntsebeza as the Transformation
Ombudsman of its Social Justice and Nation Building (SJN) project. The
project aims to investigate racial discrimination within CSA and recom-
mend remedial action. The three-month hearings commenced on July 6,
2021, receiving 11 submissions from administrators and officials, 23
from players, and 24 from other cricket unions and interested parties.
Tseliso Thipanyane (2019) paints a bleak picture of racial equality,
human rights, and non-racialism in the twenty-first century:
The post-apartheid South African society as per Section 1 of the 1996

Constitution is founded on the values of equality, the advancement of
human rights and non-racialism among others. Despite many measures,
initiatives and efforts, including the enactment of laws, policies and estab-
lishment of institutions such as the South African Human Rights
Commission to build a South Africa where all those who live in it, black
and white, equally belong, the challenge of racism and its polarizing effects
still persist in our beloved country….. sadly, and unfortunately the percep-
tions of racial superiority and inferiority still persist in our country, racist
utterances such as the k-word continues in some quarters, so do the adverse
effects of apartheid such as racial spatial planning, and economic inequali-
ties amongst many others.
The sequestration of the land and continuing Black disadvantage make

racism difficult to shift (Thipanyane 2018, Interview).17 Neeshan Balton
(2019, Interview) supports this, citing as problematic, ‘systems, struc-
tures, policies and attitudes with roots in the past becoming refined in the
post-apartheid period. Issues of spatial segregation, workplace discrimi-
nation and so on are still the key drivers’. Azola Dayile (2019, Interview)
also asserts that today’s pervasive racism has moved away from ‘personal
insults- kaffir, monkey, hottentots’ to structural and societal aspects. Race
and class mean that it is ‘still difficult for a child from Kwazakele to get
into Nelson Mandela University or Wits University than a child from
17
Tseliso Thipanyane, Chief Executive Officer, South African Human Rights Commission.
Sandton [Johannesburg Municipality] or Summerstrand [Gqeberha] for

instance’. Race impacts access to higher education and upward social
mobility. It is as if Black and white ‘exist in two countries, as much as we
keep speaking of the rhetoric of integration and reconciliation’ (Dayile
2019, Interview). The matter of ‘white ownership of the land and eco-
nomic wealth in terms of the companies listed on the Johannesburg Stock
Exchange’ is judged to be the same as under apartheid, irrespective of the
rise of the Black elite/middle classes, and poverty and landlessness are
foundational to anti-Black racism (Dayile 2019, Interview).
Post-apartheid racism has ‘now become privatized, one could say, and
it’s now you see subjects taking it upon themselves to perpetuate racism
and with social media … you can connect into a whole group of people
locally and globally with whom you can engage in this project of building
racism’ (van der Westhuizen 2019, Interview). White South Africans par-
ticipate in the white supremacist global project on social media platforms
through ‘a re-emergence of right-wing racist organizations with global
links. It is about issues of superiority, power and power relations’ (Balton
2019, Interview). White supremacist racism in South Africa continues to
be unapologetic even with human rights state machinery, legislation, and
prosecution of perpetrators. The fact is that ‘whites feel they have nothing
to lose. You know that you’re never going to have to knock on a Black
person’s door begging for a job, where you’re never going to have to suffer
an indignity as a white person just for the sake of having your basic needs
fulfilled’ (Fatyela 2018, Interview). Racism can also be driven by white
fear of loss of ‘resources, privilege, dominance, power and going through
all that. On the other hand, I think that those kinds of aggressions, if you
want to call them aggressions that are outwardly visible, are usually driven
by the conservatives and the media based on fake news. So, you have in
the general vernacular in the media, you have to talk about “white geno-
cide”, about saving the white minority race in the country. This appears
on social media every single day, like publicly fueled fear that we [whites]
are being obliterated’ (Van Reenen 2018, Interview). ‘Cyber racism is a
huge factor, but a lot of untransformed cultural, religious, educational,
sporting institutions would be key kinds of structures that support and
drive racism’ (Balton 2019, Interview). Political parties are drivers of rac-
ism ‘thriving off racial polarization, their campaigning styles and key
audience mobilization are racialized. Race and issues of racism become

political footballs during election periods’ (Balton 2019, Interview).
Covid-19 exposed South Africa’s disparities, re-igniting racial tensions.
Like other nations, the country succumbed to online misinformation (Le
Grange 2020). Initially, an elaborate myth circulated throughout South
Africa and the African continent that Covid-19 does not affect all
Africans, only Whites, Indians, and other races (Le Grange 2020). This
misconception resulted in increased Covid-19 transmission. The hashtag
#Whites trended on Twitter in South Africa during the first week of the
lockdown. Some blamed white people for introducing the virus to South
Africa, while others posted about the unfairness of hoarding essentials (Le
Grange 2020). Tweets also expressed outrage at the apparent prejudice in
how the South African National Defense Forces (SANDF) treated white
people differently from Black people in their enforcement of curfew and
other restrictions. Since the first week of the South African lockdown in
March 2020, videos and news articles have emerged portraying police
and SANDF members reportedly viciously beating Black people for any
lockdown violation (Arnold 2020). Other videos showed white individu-
als enjoying their daily exercise or braai, unconcerned by the government
directive to stay indoors, appearing to get away with just advice to social
distance.
South Africa is a signatory to the International Convention on the
Elimination of all Forms of Racial Discrimination, whilst racism persists.
Ineffective anti-racist policy is produced by ‘the interpretive scheme for
public policies which will always work in favor of the racial matrix already
in place, in the court systems, whatever systems you have’ (Keet 2019,
Interview). In South Africa there is political and social sleight of hand in
a post-apartheid ‘attempt to turn racism into something everybody can
suffer which is a dispossession of Black people’s experience’ (Mkhize
2019, Interview). The lack of an adequate definition of racism adds to
public policy’s ineffectiveness and obfuscation of the alignment between
race, Black income inequality, and racialized power differentials.
South Africa’s Constitution ‘commits the Republic of South Africa and
its people to establish a society that is based on democratic values of social
justice, human dignity, equality and the advancement of human rights
and freedoms, non-racialism and non-sexism’ (Prevention and Combating
of Hate Crimes and Hate Speech Bill 2018: 2). Section 9 guarantees the
right to equality, positive redress for previously disadvantaged groups,
prohibiting race discrimination; section 25 (5) requires the state to
actively advance equitable land access; section 26 (2) relates to equality in
housing; section 27 (2) deals with equality of access to healthcare, food,
water, and social assistance; as well as section 29 (1b and 2 a) which deal
with equality in education. There are extensive critiques of the
Constitution for racial equality across the data, for example:
Section 25, in a nutshell, says that you cannot take a person’s land without
paying for it. So, this constitution legitimizes the colonial conquest of
Black people and the land dispossession that actually occurred for that land
to have been in the hands of white people in this country… the constitu-
tion itself, I could characterize it as being fundamentally racist, because this
land that it wants to protect, in 1994 the only people that had land to
protect were white people. (Bizani 2019, Interview)
The Employment Equity Act, 55 (1998), the Promotion of Equality

and Prevention of Unfair Discrimination Action 4 (PEPUDA 2000)
mandated by the Constitution aims at ‘the eradication of social and eco-
nomic inequalities’. PEPUDA prohibits incitement to racial violence and
the propaganda on racial inferiority/superiority, the promotion of exclu-
sivity based on race, exclusion of persons by a particular social group,
providing inferior services based on the racial group, and the denial of
access to opportunities based on the racial group. PEPUDA lacks teeth as
the following examples show.
In January 2019, a picture surfaced of Black learners seated separately
from white learners at Laerskool Schweizer-Reneke. The Grade R teacher
was suspended, pending an investigation into the allegations of racism
and segregation (Shange and Tshehle 2019). As the image went viral, the
public became increasingly outraged, leading to the school hiring armed
guards. With further reports of other incidents of casual racism, the
South African Human Rights Commission also launched an investiga-
tion into the school (Makatile 2019).
In June 2021, another interaction between a teacher and her Black
students in the German International School in Cape Town sparked
outrage. The life-orientation teacher was accused of telling her students

that Black children could never have a role model because their mothers
were all prostitutes and their fathers were in jail. The teacher was sus-
pended for a week and resumed work per usual (Rice 2021). The last
three years have seen allegations of racism and segregation, from pre-
school level to high schools that progressed white students with failing
grades while holding back Black students. There is a trend of racist behav-
ior in schools of hair remarks, facial features (flat nose), and name-calling
such as bobbejaan and homo sapiens (Rice 2021).
In Higher Education, the persistence of separatist language policies
became apparent when lecturers were teaching in Afrikaans at Stellenbosch
University, despite having Black and Indian students who did not under-
stand the language (Rice 2021). In May 2019 another incident at
Stellenbosch drew attention to the systemic racism that exists within aca-
demia when a study on the cognitive abilities of ‘colored’ women was
published in the Aging, Neuropsychology and Cognition journal, (Wild
2019). The article concluded that ‘colored’ women had low cognitive
function attributed to ‘risky lifestyles’ and low levels of education. Critics
maintained the article drew on stereotypes of ‘colored’ women. The paper
was retracted following a petition with over 10,000 signatories claiming
methodological flaws. The ‘research’ is part of a long tradition using ‘sci-
ence’ to prove intellectual differences between races, justifying discrimi-
nation (Ngcukaitobi 2021). Stellenbosch has subsequently investigated
research projects in the medical, humanities, and business faculties.
The Employment Equity Act (EEA) aims to ensure equal opportunity
in employment and the use of affirmative action, as said above. The 2003
Broad-Based Black Economic (BBE) Amendment Act 55 reflects the
EEA and was intended to help the country realize substantive equality.
However, the BBE policy also has its critics with one respondent saying,
‘[the BBE policy] is not actively addressing racism. It perpetuates it in
fact because it’s one of the things that gives license to the racists to be
arrogant because they feel like they are doing us a charity or a favor by
including Black people in their companies’ (Mzinelli 2018, Interview).
The EEA also sought to empower women, young people, and people with
disabilities and those who live in rural areas.
The New Generation of Academics Programme (NGAP) is an out-

come of this legislative framework and racial equality intent and is being
invested in by the ‘Ministry of Education which is encouraging universi-
ties to participate in developing a new generation of academics consider-
ing race, gender and age’ (Mabizela 2019, Interview).18 Well-intentioned
policy can also be ineffective, because ‘racial equality policies are only as
good as the officials who have to enforce them. What we find in South
Africa is that public servants have not been trained as to how to deliver
services and implement policies in a way that empowers and affirms peo-
ple. Monitoring of implementation is also a gap’ (Balton 2019, Interview).
Ineffective implementation whether because of personnel or lack of mon-
itoring and recalibration of interventions can also lead to institutional
inertia, itself both a symptom and cause of institutional racism.
South Africa is a signatory to the Durban Declaration, and social cohe-
sion continues to be the focus of government strategy. Some, like the
white supremacist group AfriForum, believe that white South Africans
experience reverse discrimination from the state. However, the data gath-
ered shows that anti-Black racism still operates at the level of politics,
economy, wealth, society, and psyche. There is a widespread public per-
ception that South Africans live ‘post-apartheid apartheid’. However,
there has been democratization and societal change even if slow:
there is a line of thinking that says, ‘oh, we’ve got this wonderful constitu-
tion, we’ve got these laws, but they don’t mean anything’. The fact of the
matter is if one should just cast one’s mind back a couple of decades to
know that any of the kinds of protest actions that you see today, the kind
of public speech that you see today against discrimination, the kind of
open engagement with difficult issues in South Africa, was absolutely
unthinkable during the apartheid era. (van der Westhuizen 2019, Interview)
Notwithstanding these changes, the Committee on the Elimination of

Racial Discrimination (CERD) (2014) stated that the formal equality
measures in South Africa had not been translated substantively even after
twenty years of democracy. Racial discrimination related to social and
18
Mahlubi Mabizela, Department of Higher Education and Training.
economic inequality and lack of land reform; and Indigenous peoples,

sexual minorities, and people living with HIV were vulnerable to racial
inequality. The Indigenous question continues to be ignored in public life
and mainstream politics. The African Charter on Human and People’s
Rights (ACHPR) prohibits racial and ethnic discrimination in Article 3
and the rights of non-nationals are referred to in Article 12 (5). The aim
of racial equality contained in ACHPR is stymied because of structural
inequality inherited from apartheid, white sequestration of the land and
Black dispossession, unequal distribution of wealth, and inequitable
access to healthcare because ‘the color of private healthcare continues to
be white and underfunded public healthcare remains Black’ (Mzinelli
2018, Interview). However, ‘Black people cannot live on antiracism alone
because that is to focus on white people as the problem’ (Mkhize 2019,
Interview). This focus leaves institutional racism untouched while center-
ing hate speech. Hate speech continues to cause some of the human
rights violations which led to the Prevention and Combating of Hate
Speech Bill in 2018 (SAHRC 2017).
In August 2019, Judge Phineas Mogapelo ruled that the display of the
Old Flag—a symbol of white supremacist rule in South Africa—was tan-
tamount to hate speech, racial discrimination, and harassment under the
Equality Act. The hearing came after a call by the Nelson Mandela
Foundation backed by the South African Human Rights Commission
and Johannesburg Pride (Mettler 2019). This was opposed by AfriForum,
contesting on cultural grounds, as is its right within the constitution and
the nation’s legislative protections. AfriForum argued that the Equality
Act does not regulate symbols, only words (Head 2019). Judge Phineas
Mogapelo acknowledged that while the flag’s meaning was ‘still divisive’,
it is clearly discriminative and inflammatory. Thus, the ‘gratuitous’ dis-
play of the flag was a crime.
This example shows that South Africa must confront coloniality which
structures social life without disrupting the democratic order by locating
itself at the heart of capitalism (Hudson 2019). The power of property,
managerial prerogative, and capitalism are concealed by the ‘appearance’
of equality (Hudson 2019) while:
Another random document with
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— Sinä kaltoin kasvatettu sikiö, — huusi Syvähenki
vimmastuneena, — opetanpa sinua nyt kerrankin, jotta vastedes
minut muistaisit.
Ja huitoen sauvallaan päänsä yli hän syöksyi rosvokuningasta

vastaan.
Tämä vältti iskun keihäällään ja huusi:
— Kuuleppas, munkki! Sinun äänesi tuntuu tutulta. Mikä on

nimesi?
— Nimeni oli ennen Lo Ta, mutta sitten minä rupesin munkiksi, ja

siitä saakka kutsutaan minua Syvähengeksi.
— Hahahaa! — nauroi rosvokuningas, astui alas hevosen selästä,

heitti keihäänsä syrjään, kumarsi ja sanoi:
— Missä olette te kuljeskellut senjälkeen, kun viimeksi tapasimme!

Ymmärränpä nyt millaisen miehen käsiin asetoverini joutui.
— Hän joutui täällä pahaan pulaan ja se olikin hänelle oikein, —

sanoi Lo Ta astuen askeleen taaksepäin ja laskien sauvansa
maahan. Mutta kun hän tulisoihtujen valossa katseli rosvopäällikköä
tarkemmin, hän tunsi hänet Li Tshung nimiseksi rohtokauppiaaksi ja
puoskariksi, tuoksi tunnetuksi »Tiikerisurmaksi», jonka hän oli
viimeksi nähnyt juomalassa Wei Tshoun kaupungissa.
Lo Syvähenki vastasi nyt toisen kumarrukseen. Sitten he

vaihtoivat keskenään kohteliaita selityksiä, kunnes Syvähenki
vihdoin pyysi rosvoa astumaan sisään keskustelemaan asiasta
enemmän.
Kun vanha Liu huomasi tämän muutoksen, hän huudahti:

— Mikä pohjaton onnettomuus! Tämä munkki kuuluu nähtävästi
samaan joukkoon kuin nuo muut rosvot.
Kun nuo molemmat olivat taas istuutuneet, kuten kerran tuossa

Wei Tshoun juomalassa, huusi Syvähenki Liun luokseen. Mutta tämä
pelkäsi niin kovasti, ettei mitenkään olisi uskaltanut lähemmäksi
astua.
— Älkää peljätkö, vanhus, — virkkoi Syvähenki, — tämä on vain

eräs toverini.
Tämä lisäsi Liu paran pelkoa sitäkin enemmän, mutta hän ei

uskaltanut vastustaa, vaan astui luo ja istuutui heidän viereensä.
— Nyt, kun te molemmat siinä edessäni istutte, — sanoi

Syvähenki, — niin tahdonpa teille kertoa palasen elämääni.
Kun hän oli kertonut, hän jatkoi rosvopäällikköön päin kääntyen:
— Minä en aavistanut vähääkään, että tulisin tapaamaan teidät

täällä. Entä kuka oli tuo, jota minä niin kovasti pitelin? Ja mitä te
täällä muutoin teette?
— Erottuani teistä ja Shi Tsunista siellä juomalan edessä, — kertoi

Li Tshung, — minä seuraavana päivänä kuulin, että te sen
likakauppiaan todella tapoitte. Minä etsin sitten Shi Tsunia, mutta kun
en häntä tavannut, tunsin asemani teidän vangitsemiskuulutuksenne
johdosta epävarmaksi ja pakenin. Kun minä sitten pitkän aikaa
senjälkeen kuljin tämän vuoren ohi, hyökkäsi tuo mies, jota te niin
pahoin pieksitte, minun kimppuuni aikeissa ryöstää minut. Minä pidin
kuitenkin puoleni ja hän kutsui minut luokseen ja pyysi minua
liittymään joukkoonsa tarjoten minulle sivupäällikkyyden. Häntä
nimitetään »toiseksi päämieheksi», Tshou Jungiksi.
— Hyvä! — selitti Syvähenki. — Koska nyt itse olette täällä, niin

pyydän teitä, ettei sanaakaan enää puhuttaisi Liun tyttären häistä.
Tämä on hänen ainoa lapsensa, ja jos hänet Liu vanhukselta
otettaisiin, jäisi ukko vanhoilla päivillään aivan yksin, ystävittä
epätoivoon.
— Tässä suhteessa ei tule olemaan mitään vaikeuksia, vakuutti Li

Tshung, — mutta ettekö palaisi kanssamme vuorelle tervehtimään
meitä?
Ja ukko Liu lähtee ehkä samaan seuraan?
Kun vanha Liu tämän kuuli, hän riemastui suuresti ja riensi

toimittamaan kestitystä kummallekin vieraalle. Jokainen Li Tshungin
joukkueesta sai niin paljon kuin jaksoi nauttia. Sitten toi Liu rahat ja
punaisen silkkikankaan, jotka morsiuslahjaksi oli annettu, käski
tuoda kaksi kantotuolia esiin, toisen, suuremman Syvähenkeä varten
ja toisen pienemmän itseään varten, ja valitsi palvelijat, jotka saivat
tehtäväkseen tuoda tavarat. Sitten he lähtivät liikkeelle Li Tshungin
kanssa, joka nousi hevosensa selkään, Kirsikkavuoren rosvoleiriin,
jonne he aamun valjetessa saapuivat. He istuivat ylipäällikkö Li
Tshungin teltassa, kun tämä lähetti kutsumaan Tshou Tungia, tuota
toista rosvopäällikköä sinne. Kun Tshou Tung astui sisään ja näki
miehet, hän suuttui tuimasti ja sanoi:
— Veli, mitä tämä on? Sen sijaan, että kostaisitte puolestani, te

tuotte hänet tänne osottaen hänelle kunniapaikan teltassanne!
— Veli, — kysyi toinen, — ettekö tunne tuota munkkia sitten?

— Jos olisin hänet tuntenut, niin en kaiketi olisi joutunutkaan
hänen käsiinsä.
— Tämä munkki tappoi kolmella nyrkiniskulla keisarin »läntisen

rajan suojelijan», kuten olen teille joskus kertonut.
Silloin kävi Tshou Tung tukkaansa kiinni ja huudahti ihmetyksestä.

Sitten hän kumarsi Syvähengelle. Tämä vastasi kumarrukseen
sanoen:
— Minä toivon, ettette tunne itseänne loukatuksi, vaikka nousinkin

teitä vastaan.
Sitten he istuutuivat kaikki paitsi vanha Liu, ja Syvähenki sanoi:
— Herra Tshou ja te, hänen asetoverinsa, kuulkaa minua. Minä

toivon teidän ottavan huomioonne, että Liu vanhuksella on vain yksi
ainoa tytär. Tämän täytyy, niin kauan kuin isänsä elää, pitää hänestä
huolta, ja kun hän kuolee, haudata hänet ja toimittaa hänelle
uhrilahjoja ja pyhää savua. Jos te siis yhä aiotte voittaa hänen
tyttärensä, niin saatatte te vanhan isän epätoivoiseksi. Hän ei voi
tyttärensä naimisiin suostua. Sentähden täytyy teidän nyt luvata olla
tätä enää ajattelematta ja valita itsellenne joku toinen. Tässä ovat
morsiuslahjaksi annetut rahat ja silkkikangas. No mitä te nyt asiasta
arvelette?
— Kaiketi, — vastasi Tshou Tung, — en minä tulevaisuudessa

enää astu siihen taloon.
— Suuren päällikön täytyy pitää sanansa ja vastata kunniastansa,

tietäkää se, — sanoi Syvähenki.
Ja rosvokuningas Tshou Tung katkaisi jousensa vannoen
pitävänsä sanansa. Vanha Liu kiitti häntä syvään kumartaen, antoi
morsiuslunnaat takaisin ja läksi sitten kotiinsa.
Lo Ta opettaa omalla tavallaan.
Rosvot teurastivat nyt hevosia ja sikoja ja pitivät Syvähengen

luonaan pitkän aikaa juhlien häntä. He näyttivät hänelle myöskin
leirinsä ja sen ympäristön. Ja tämä Kirsikkavuori oli todellakin mainio
väijyntäpaikka, sillä sen huippu oli metsän peittämä, jyrkänteet olivat
louhikkaita ja luoksepääsemättömiä ja ympäristö oli sakeaa metsää
ja köynnöksiä monen peninkulman päähän. Leiriin johti yksi ainoa
tie, joka oli vahvasti vartioitu.
Kun Syvähenki oli muutaman päivän heidän luonaan viettänyt, hän

huomasi heidän olevan halpamaisia ja ahneita ja halusi sentähden
pois vuorelta. He koettivat pidättää häntä, mutta turhaan.
— Kuinka saattaisin minä, — sanoi hän, — kun olen kerran

vetäytynyt maailman menosta syrjään, ruveta ruohossa vaanimaan
ohikulkijoita?
— Siinä tapauksessa, — vastasivat rosvot, — vartokaa edes

huomiseen saakka, hyvä ystävämme. Me lähdemme alas ja mitä
saaliiksi saamme, sen annamme teille lahjaksi.
Seuraavana päivänä he pitivät hänelle suuren lähtöjuhlan ja toivat

kaikki kulta- ja hopeatavaransa esiin. Samalla tuli tieto, että alhaalla
vuoren juurella kulki kaksi kuormaa ohi vain kymmenen vartiomiestä
mukana. Silloin hypähtivät rosvot pystyyn ja suurin osa heistä riensi
jyrkännettä alas, joten vain pari kolme jäi jälelle Syvähenkeä
palvelemaan. Lähtiessään huusivat he vielä:
— Ystävämme, käyttäkää mielenne mukaan hyväksenne mitä

tahdotte, kunnes me palaamme takaisin ja tuomme jotakin teille
lahjaksi.
Kun he olivat poistuneet, tuumaili Syvähenki:
— Vaikka noilla roistoilla on runsaasti kultaa ja hopeaa, lähtevät

he pois antamatta minulle siitä mitään ja ryöstävät mieluummin
toisten omaisuutta — minulle lahjaksi. Tehdäkseen minulle mieliksi,
täytyy heidän siis tehdä muille pahaa. Mutta minäpä hämmästytän
heitä!
Hän huusi nuo muutamat jälellejääneet luokseen ja käski heidän

tuoda väkijuomaa. Tyhjennettyään sitä muutaman kipposen,
Syvähenki nutisti heidät maahan ja sitoi heidät heidän omiin
vaatteihinsa. Sitten hän avasi suuren vuotansa, heitti kaiken
tarpeettoman siitä pois, sotki ja rutisti jaloillaan kaikki esilletuodut
kulta- ja hopea-astiat ja kääri ne vuotaan. Sen tehtyään hän otti muut
myttynsä, miekkansa ja sauvansa ja läksi leirin päinvastaiseen
päähän. Täällä hän etsi polkua, jota pitkin voisi päästä pois. Mutta
vuoren rinteet olivat joka puolelta niin jyrkät, ettei niitä pitkin voinut
kulkea, ja hän ajatteli itsekseen:
— Jos minä menen takaisin ja laskeudun sitä tietä vuorelta, niin

joudun minä tekemisiin noitten poikien kanssa. Täytyypä siis koettaa
liukua tästä ruohoa pitkin alas.
Hän sitoi myttynsä yhteen ja viskasi ne alas. Sitten hän lähetti
miekkansa ja sauvansa samaa tietä ja liukui vihdoin itse kyyryssä
vuoren jyrkännettä alas tullen perille pyörien kuin pallo muutaman
kerran ympäri. Ruoho suojasi häntä eikä hän loukkaantunut
lainkaan, vaan nousi heti alas tultuaan pystyyn, sieppasi myttynsä,
miekan ja sauvan ja marssi halki pitkän ruohon maantielle päin.
Sillävälin olivat rosvopäälliköt Li ja Tshou joukkoineen saapuneet

laaksoon, mutta näkivätkin kymmenen miehen sijasta
kolmattakymmentä hyvinvarustettua matkustajaa. Näitä kohti
ryntäsivät he nyt keihäät ojossa huutaen:
— Hei! matkustajat! Pysähtykää maksamaan tullia!
Mutta eräs matkustajista, jolla oli säilä kädessä, astui rohkeasti

Lita kohti ja he miekkailivat jonkun aikaa kummankaan voittamatta
kunnes Tshou raivoissaan ryntäsi toverinsa avuksi. Samalla hyökkäsi
koko rosvojoukko hänen käskystään matkustajain kimppuun, valtasi
ne, tappoi muutamia ja haavotti toisia. Ryöstettyään sen jälkeen
kuormat he palasivat voitonriemuissaan vuorelle takaisin.
Mutta kun he saapuivat leiriin, he huomasivatkin, että jälelle

jääneet pari leiriläistä makasi sidottuina maassa ja että kaikki kulta-
ja hopea-astiat olivat kadoksissa.
Tshou vapautti sidotut ja kysyi heiltä, mitä oli tapahtunut ja missä

Syvähenki on. Kuultuaan tarkemmin asiasta hän meni leirin toiseen
päähän, katseli vuoren rinnettä alas ja huomasi ruohon eräältä
kohtaa olevan laossa. Tästä oli Syvähenki liukunut alas.
— Tuo kaljupäinen lurjus on vanha varas! Kukapa uskoisi, että

joku uskaltaa heittäytyä tuohon rotkoon?! — ihmetteli Tshou.
— Me ajamme häntä takaa ja otamme kiinni — sanoi Li, joka oli
saapunut paikalle, — ja vaadimme häneltä hyvitystä tästä
loukkauksesta.
— Parempi on olla ajamatta! — harkitsi toinen. — Kun varas on

kerran mennyt, niin me emme mahda sille enää mitään. Miksi
ajaisimme häntä takaa? Vaikkapa saavuttaisimmekin, saattaisi hän
voittaa meidät ja siten vain lisätä häpeätämme. Jääköön se silleen ja
jakakaamme mieluummin, mitä juuri saaliiksi saimme.
— Koska minä, — virkkoi Li, — olin oikeastaan syynä siihen, että

Syvähenki joutui leiriimme, niin luovutan minä sinulle oman osani
saaliista.
— Ei, ei! — väitti Tshou vastaan. — Me kaksi olemme asetovereja.

Se ei siis sovi meille.
Valtion asiakirjoista tiedämme, että nämä kaksi Kirsikkavuoren

»kuningasta» jatkoivat entiseen tapaan ryöstämistä.
Lo Syvähenki oli sillä välin, hän oli näet varhain aamulla lähtenyt
leiristä, kulkenut päivälliseen saakka noin viisitoista, ehkä
parikymmentäkin Kiinan penikulmaa ja alkoi nyt vähitellen tuntea
nälkää. Mutta kun hän ei nähnyt ainoatakaan ihmisasuntoa, hän
astui kiireesti eteenpäin katsellen etsivästi joka suuntaan. Vihdoin
hän kuuli helähtävän äänen, ikäänkuin olisi tuulen hengähdys tuonut
luostarin kellon soiton hänen kuuluviinsa, ja hän ajatteli itsekseen.
— Jumalan kiitos, sielläpäin on varmaan joku luostari. Minä

tunnen sen kellojen äänestä.
Eikä hänen tarvinnut kulkea varsin pitkää matkaa yleistä maantietä
pitkin, joka johti tämän vuorisen seudun halki, kun hän joutui
havumetsään johtavalle syrjätielle. Hän lähti kulkemaan tätä pitkin ja
näki jonkun aikaa astuttuaan puoleksi rappiolle joutuneen luostarin,
jonka pienet kellot soivat iloisesti tuulessa huojuvassa hongassa.
Ulkoportin päällä riippui suuri punainen lauta, jossa kultaisin, mutta
jo sangen vaalennein kirjaimin seisoi luostarin nimi. Kun hän oli
kulkenut suunnilleen viisikymmentä askelta portista sisälle, hänen oli
kuljettava kivisillan yli ja niin hän joutui vanhan vieraskodin edustalle,
jonka ovi ja muurit olivat luhistuneet kokoon.
— Kuinka on tämä suuri luostari saattanut joutua näin rappiolle?

— ihmetteli Syvähenki. Hän kääntyi rakennuksesta pois ja tuli
luostarinjohtajan asunnon edustalle, jonka kivitys oli kyyhkysten
likaama ja oven esilukko hämähäkinverkon peittämä. Syvähenki löi
sauvallaan maahan ja huusi:
— Matkustava munkki tahtoo ruokaa!
Mutta niin kauvan ja kovin kuin hän huusikin, ei kuulunut muuta

vastausta kuin kaiku.
Hän meni keittiöön ja ruokahuoneeseen. Siellä ei näkynyt kattilaa

tulella; uuni oli hajalla. Ruokahuoneen suojelusjumalat seisoivat vain
vanhalla paikallaan. Niitten eteen hän laski myttynsä ja läksi sitten
sauva kädessä tarkemmin tutkimaan paikkaa.
Hän joutui pieneen mökkiin keittiön takana. Siellä istui lattialla

muutama vanha, kalpea ja laiha munkki.
— Oletteko te munkit pois järjiltänne? — kysyi Lo Syvähenki. —

Annatte minun juosta ympäri ja huutaa kurkkuni halki eikä viitsi
yksikään teistä vastata!
— Älkää puhuko niin lujasti, — virkkoivat munkit.
— Minä olen matkustava munkki ja pyydän ruokaa. Mitä pahaa

voisi siinä olla?
— Me emme ole kolmeen päivään syöneet riisin jyvääkään, kuinka

siis voisimme teille ruokaa antaa?
— Onhan teillä kaiketi ainakin jyviä tai vadillinen riisijauhoja! Minä

olen Viidentaulunvuoren munkkeja.
— Jos te kerran sieltä olette, olisi pyhä velvollisuutemme auttaa

teitä. Mutta sitä emme mitenkään voi tehdä. Tämän luostarin munkit
ovat kaikki lähteneet matkoihinsa eikä ole meillä jyvääkään
varastossa.
— Järjetöntä! Älkää sanokokaan, ettei näin laajassa luostarissa

olisi minkäänlaista ruokaa varastossa.
— Tämä on ollut, kuten te aivan oikein sanoitte, aikoinaan

huomattava turvapaikka ja luostari. Mutta se on ollut. Täällä kävi
usein matkustavia veljiä, mutta senjälkeen kuin eräs jättiläismunkki
toverinsa kanssa tämän valtasi, joutui luostari rappiolle. Nämä kaksi
tekivät täällä kaikenlaista pahaa. He ajoivat kaikki munkit pakosalle
paitsi meitä vanhimpia. Me emme jaksaneet juosta ja sen tähden
saimme luvan jäädä. Mutta meillä ei ole mitään syötävää, kuten
näette.
— Saatanko minä uskoa, että kaksi munkkia on tämän kaiken

tehnyt teidän ilmottamatta siitä viranomaisille?
— Oo, kunnianarvoisa munkki, viranomaiset ovat kaukana,
sangen kaukana täältä eikä olisi poliisivoimakaan heidän
hävitykselleen mitään mahtanut. Se hurja munkki ja hänen toverinsa
harjottivat täällä kaikenmoista ilkityötä, murhasivat, ryöstivät ja
polttivat. Nyt asuvat he tuolla luostarinjohtajan rakennuksen takana.
— Mikä on miesten nimi?
— He käyttävät tietysti valenimiä. Se jättiläismunkki sanoo itseään

»rautaiseksi Buddhaksi» ja hänen seuralaisensa nimi on »lentävä
noita». Munkinviittaa he käyttävät luonnollisesti valepukuna. Niin, he
ovat suorastaan sentapaisia rosvoja, jotka metsissä vaaniskelevat
ohikulkijoita.
Syvähengen näin tutkiskellessa vanhoja munkkeja, osui ruuanhaju

hänen nenäänsä. Hän läksi heti sauva kädessä etsinnälle ja löysikin
savesta tehdyn tulisijan, jolla oli kattila tulella. Hän nosti kattilan
kantta ja näki riisijauhopuuron kiehuvan.
— Mitä lurjuksia te munkit olettekaan! — sätti hän. Sanotte

minulle, että ette ole kolmeen päivään mitään syöneet, ja täällä
kiehuu puuropata. Mitä se sellainen valehteleminen on?
Vanhat munkit voivottelivat, kun heidän riisipuuronsa löytyi, ja

korjasivat lautasensa pian pois. Mutta Lo Syvähenki tunsi nälkänsä
kasvavan kovasti, etenkin nyt, kun oli löytynyt syötävää, ja koska
hätä keinon keksii, niin hän pyyhkäisi ruohotukolla tomun vanhalta
pöydältä, tarttui kaksin käsin kattilaan ja tyhjensi sen pöydälle.
Kun nuo vanhat munkit näkivät, miten heidän puuronsa kävi, he

tulivat pöydän luo ottaakseen osansa. Mutta Syvähenki sysäsi heidät
pois, työnsipä toisia nurin ja ajoi toisia matkoihinsa. Senjälkeen hän
alkoi puuron sakeampaa osaa mätkiä kämmenellään suuhunsa. Eipä
ennättänyt hän seitsemää kertaa pistää kättään puuroon, kun nuo
vanhat munkit taas hänet ympäröivät valittaen:
— Totta totisesti, me emme ole kolmeen päivään syöneet mitään,

ja kun meidän nyt onnistui saada vähäsen riisiä puuroksi, niin te
tulette ja viette senkin.
Kun Syvähenki poistui pöydän luota, hän kuuli jonkun laulavan

ulkona, nosti sauvansa olalle ja riensi pihalle.
Luostariin näkyi tulevan muuan mies, joka kantoi olkapäällään

koria ja ruukkua kiinnitettyinä kantopuun kumpaankin päähän.
Korista pisti esiin kalan pyrstö ja sitäpaitsi näkyi siinä lotoskukan
lehtiin käärittynä olevan muutakin ruokaa. Ruukussa oli väkijuomaa
ja ruukun kantena lotoslehti. Mies lauloi tullessaan:
Sä olet yksin niinkuin minäkin, ei sulla miestä, mull' ei

vaimoa. Jos hyväilyittä elät sinäkin, mun elämäni vast' on
kauhea.
Munkit seurasivat Syvähenkeä ulos, osottivat laulavaa miestä ja

kuiskasivat hänelle:
— Tuo on se »lentävä noita».
Syvähenki kohotti sauvansa ja seurasi miestä. Tämä ei

huomannut sitä, vaan meni suoraa päätä luostarinjohtajan
rakennuksen takana sijaitsevaan olinpaikkaansa.
Nyt näki Syvähenki kolmelle hengelle katetun sievän pöydän

tuuhean puun varjossa. Tanakka, hartiakas munkki, jolla oli mustat,
pitkät kulmakarvat, istui yläpäässä pöytää ja hänen vieressään nuori
tyttö.
Syvähenki astui hiljaa aivan lähelle ja pelotti heidät. Munkki

hypähti pystyyn ja sanoi:
— Minä pyydän, kunnianarvoisa isä, olkaa hyvä ja istuutukaa

kanssamme aterioimaan.
Syvähenki nosti sauvansa olalleen ja kysyi:
— Miksi olette tämän luostarin hävittäneet?
— Hyvä isä, — vastasi munkki, — pyydän teitä istuutumaan ja

kuuntelemaan, mitä sanon.
— Minä odotan pikaista vastausta, ymmärrättekö, — huusi

Syvähenki katsoen tuimasti.
— Tämä luostari oli paraita näillä seuduilla, sillä sillä oli laajat
tilukset ja se saattoi tarjota monen monelle munkille mitä
mukavimman olon. Mutta luostarin munkkeja, joista näette vielä
muutamia vanhoja tuolla käytävässä, syytettiin siitä, että he elivät
ylellisesti ja pitivät naisia luonaan eikä voinut johtajakaan pitää heitä
kurissa. Tekivätpä he vielä valituksen häntä vastaan ja saivat hänet
pois virastaan. Kun luostari senjälkeen oli vähitellen joutunut aivan
rappiolle, munkit hajaantuivat mikä minnekin ja luostarin tilukset
myytiin. Sentähden minä tulin tänne ottaakseni luostarin haltuuni ja
laittaakseni sen taas kuntoon. Me olemme tässä juuri olleet
hommassa korjata vanha ulkoportti ja tehdä uudet katot muutamiin
rakennuksiin.
— Kuka on tämä nuori tyttö? — kysyi Syvähenki.

— Hyvä isä, minä tahdon kertoa teille hänenkin tarinansa. Hän on
erään rikkaan miehen tytär naapurikylästä. Hänen isänsä oli pitkän
aikaa luostarin suosijoita. Mutta perhe joutui vararikkoon ja tyttö on
nyt köyhä; hänen miehensä on sitäpaitsi sairas. Sentähden on hän,
kuten näette, tullut tänne hakemaan vähäsen riisiä, ja
kunnioituksesta hänen isäänsä kohtaan minä pyysin häntä
aterioimaan kanssamme. Älkää uskoko, hyvä isä, mitä nuo vanhat
munkit teille sanovat!
Kun Syvähenki oli saanut kuulla tämän perinpohjaisen selvityksen,

hän virkkoi:
— Vai ovat nuo vanhat munkit vetäneet minua nenästä? No, enpä
aio toista kertaa enää sellaista suvaita.
Sen sanottuaan hän nosti taas sauvansa olalle ja palasi

keittiörakennuksen takana olevaan mökkiin.
Munkit seisoivat paraikaa pöydän ympärillä noukkien viimeisiä

riisinjyväsiä. Syvähenki hyppäsi heidän keskelleen ja huusi:
— Te itse olette tämän luostarin hävittäneet ja sitten kehtaatte

vielä valehdella minulle vasten naamaa!
— Älkää uskoko heitä, — huusivat munkit kuin yhdestä suusta. —

Kun he näkivät teidän sauvanne ja miekkanne ja olivat itse aseitta,
he eivät uskaltaneet haastaa riitaa kanssanne. Jollette usko meitä,
niin menkää vielä kerta takaisin, ja saattepa nähdä, että he ottavat
teidät nyt toisin vastaan. Ja ajatelkaa toki, kunnianarvoisa veli, että
he syövät lihaa ja juovat viinaa, kun meillä sitävastoin ei ole enää
riisin jyvääkään ja jouduimme vielä suurempaan hätään, kun te
saatoitte syödä viimeisemme.
— Siinä on järkeä, — ajatteli Lo Syvähenki itsekseen ja läksi
toisen puolueen luo. Mutta ovi, joka vei sinne, oli suljettu ja teljetty ja
hänen täytyi potkaista se auki.
Kun hän astui sisään, tuli »rautainen Buddha» häntä vastaan suuri
miekka kädessä. Lo Syvähenki kohotti sauvansa ja ottelu alkoi. Kun
»rautainen Buddha» oli kaksitoista tai neljätoista kertaa iskenyt
miekallaan, hänen täytyi jo peräytyä jaksamatta tuskin enää välttää
Syvähengen lyöntejä. Silloin hiipi »lentävä noita» Lo Syvähengen taa
iskeäkseen väkipuukon hänen selkäänsä.
Syvähenki kuuli kyllä hänen askeleensa ja näki hänen varjonsa,

vaan ei uskaltanut heti kääntyä ympäri peläten salajuonta. Hän laski
sentähden sauvansa maahan ja heitti itsensä sen varassa
»rautaisen Buddhan» lyöntipiiriä ulommaksi karjaisten samalla niin
kamalasti, että toiset säpsähtäen vetäytyivät taaksepäin. Saatuaan
näin selkänsä turvatuksi hän kääntyi kumpaakin vastaan ja taisteli
kuolemaa halveksien pitkän aikaa yksin kahta vastaan. Mutta
ensiksikin Syvähenki taisteli nälkäisenä, toiseksi hän oli sinä päivänä
kulkenut pitkän matkan ja kolmanneksi oli yksin peräti vaikeata pitää
hyvissä voimissakin puoliaan kahta sellaista sotakarhua vastaan.
Hän laski sauvansa ja pakeni.
Toiset kaksi seurasivat häntä ulkoportille saakka. Siellä Syvähenki

kääntyi vielä kerta heitä vastaan ja piti vielä jonkun aikaa puoliaan,
mutta sitten hänen täytyi taas paeta. Nyt eivät »rautainen Buddha»
ja »lentävä noita» viitsineet enää ajaa häntä takaa, väsyneitä kun
olivat, vaan istuutuivat kivisillan kaidepuulle.
Lo Syvähenki oli ennättänyt jo melko kauas, kun hän huomasi

unohtaneensa myttynsä luostariin Buddhapatsaan eteen. Kiireessä
hän ei ollut niitä muistanut. Mutta kuinka hän voisi tulla rahatta
toimeen matkalla? Sitäpaitsi hänen oli kova nälkä ja hyvin
toivottomalta näytti paluu takaisin ja uusi tappelu noitten lurjusten
kanssa. Se olisi suorastaan vaarallista!
Hänen näin arvellessaan, mitä nyt olisi tehtävä, painui tie

tuuheaan havumetsään:
— Kuinka synkkä metsä! — ajatteli hän.
Samassa näkyi tuntematon mies pistävän päänsä esiin

puunrungon takaa ja viheltävän. Mies katsahti vain lyhyeen sieltä, löi
kätensä yhteen ja katosi.
Syvähenki ajatteli:
— Se on joku pakkoverottaja, joka vaanii ohikulkijoita, ja kun hän

näki, että minä olen vain munkki, hän löi käsiään yhteen, ikäänkuin
sanoakseen: Ei ole sinusta mihinkään. Mutta minäpä näytän hänelle,
että kyllä on minussa vielä miehen vastus. Entä jos kiskoisin tuolta
lurjukselta hänen vaatteensa ja moisin ne sitten saadakseni vähäsen
suuhun pantavaa?
Syvähenki nosti sauvansa olkapäälle ja astui metsään:
— Hoi, sinä metsäkukko! Astu esiin!
Metsässä vaaniva mies nauroi ja puheli itsekseen:
— Hän on loukkaantunut ja vaatii minua esille!
Ja hän sieppasi miekkansa ja hyppäsi esiin huutaen:
— Nyt sinä kaljupää joudut surman suuhun! Mutta syytä itseäsi, en

minä sinua tänne kutsunut!
— Tahdonpa antaa sinulle jotakin, jotta minut muistaisit! — huusi
Syvähenki ja hyökkäsi toista kohti.
Mies varustautui puolustamaan itseään miekallansa. Mutta tuskin

hän oli kunnolla ehtinyt silmäillä Syvähenkeä, kun mieleensä juolahti
ajatus, että tuo näyttää tutulta. Ja hän kysyi:
— Herkeä hetkeksi, munkki! Äänesi kuuluu tutulta. Mikä on

nimesi?
— Kyllä minä sen kohta sinulle sanon ja niin, että sinun pitää se
muistaman, — vastasi Syvähenki.
Nyt pikastui toinenkin ja ottelu alkoi. Mutta tuskin he olivat

kymmentä kertaa iskeneet, kun metsävaanija arveli:
— Tuopa vasta julma munkki! — Ja hetken kuluttua virkkoi hän

taas: —
Herkeä, pyhä veli edes silmänräpäykseksi, minulla on asiaa sinulle.
Molemmat peräytyivät pari askelta ja mies sanoi asiansa.
— Todellakin, minä tunnen teidät. Mikä on nimenne?
Kun mies kuuli nimen Lo Ta, hän heitti miekkansa maahan,

kumarsi kohteliaasti ja sanoi:
— Ehkä muistatte vielä erään Shi Tsunin?
— Kautta kunniani, herra Shi siinä seisookin edessäni! — huusi Lo

Syvähenki nauraen ja vastasi kumarrukseen. Sitten molemmat
astuivat syvemmälle metsään kertoakseen seikkailujaan.
Myöskin Shi Tsun oli lihakauppiaan murhan johdosta paennut Wei
Tshousta pohjoiseen päin. Mutta kun hänen varansa vihdoin
loppuivat, hän pysähtyi tänne »katsomaan, miten päästä
pälkähästä».
Kun Syvähenkikin oli kertonut omat seikkailunsa, virkkoi Shi Tsun:
— Veli hyvä, jos teidän on nälkä, on minulla tarjota lihaa ja

muutamia piirakoita. — Ja kaivettuaan ruoat esiin lisäsi: — Koska
olette unohtanut myttynne luostariin, niin lähdemme yhdessä niitä
hakemaan, ja jos ne lurjukset eivät niitä hevillä hellitä, niin kyllä me
teemme pian selvää.
— Niin teemme, — lisäsi siihen Syvähenki kiirehtien syömistään.

Sitten he tarttuivat aseihinsa ja läksivät tuohon rappiolle
joutuneeseen luostariin.
»Rautainen Buddha» ja »lentävä noita» istuivat yhä vielä

kivisillalla.
— Ylös, roistot! — huusi Syvähenki heille. — Tällä kertaa ottaakin

kovalle!
— Vai syhyy teidän selkänne vielä, vaikka äsken jouduitte

alakynteen? — vastasi siihen »rautainen Buddha» nauraen.
Silloin nosti Syvähenki raivostuneena sauvansa ja syöksyi sillalle.

»Rautainen Buddha» asettui paljastettu miekka kädessä ja otsa
ryppyisenä vastarintaan. Tällä kertaa piti Shi Tsun huolta siitä, ettei
»lentävä noita» voinut takaa päin hyökätä Syvähengen niskaan.
Sitäpaitsi hänen nälkänsä oli tyydytetty ja hän oli siis sekä
paremmissa voimissa että hyvällä tuulella.
Tuima ottelu oli taas käymässä. Lo Syvähenki alkoi jo päästä
vastustajastaan voitolle, kun »lentävä noita» yritti taas takaa päin
hänen kimppuunsa. Mutta silloin hyppäsi Shi Tsun sillalle huutaen:
— Äläppäs huolii Jätä hänet!
Ja Shi Tsun kävi tuon salakavalan »lentävän noidan» kimppuun.

Nyt he olivat niinkuin pitikin, kaksi kahta vastaan. Syvähenki sai
vähitellen voiton ja työnsi »rautaisen Buddhan» vihdoin sillan
kaidepuun yli.
Kun »lentävä noita» näki toverinsa putoovan, hän menetti

rohkeutensa ja yritti paeta. Mutta Shi Tsun seurasi häntä kintereillä,
löi hänet miekallaan maahan ja lävisti hänen ruumiinsa. Sillä välin oli
Lo Ta iskenyt sillan alle pudonnutta vielä niin rajusti, että tämä
paikalla heitti henkensä. Niin olivat nuo kaksi rohkeata seikkailijaa
kadonneet kuin unelma. Syvähenki ja Shi Tsun sitoivat heidän
ruumiinsa yhteen ja heittivät jokeen.
Kun he sitten astuivat luostariin noutamaan myttyjä, he

huomasivat, että kaikki vanhat munkit olivat hirttäytyneet, nähtävästi
peläten »rautaisen Buddhan» vihaa. He pistäytyivät myös
luostarinjohtajan aution asunnon taa ja näkivät tuon nuoren tytön
syöksyneen kaivoon ja hukkuneen. Ei ainoatakaan elävää sielua
näkynyt.
Ystävykset löysivät eräästä vaatekääröstä vähäsen hopeata,

minkä Shi Tsun otti huostaansa, sekä lihaa ynnä muuta ruokaa. He
keittivät nämä ja tyydyttivät nälkänsä tyystin. Sitten he laittoivat
matkamyttynsä, tekivät muutamia risukimppuja ja sytyttivät aution,
hävinneen luostarin tuleen. Kun tulenlieskat yhtenä suurena
patsaana taivasta tavottelivat, he läksivät pois.
Koko yön he kulkivat yhdessä ja kun he seuraavan päivän
aamuna saapuivat erääseen kylään, he poikkesivat majataloon
aamiaiselle.
— Mitä te nyt oikein aiotte tehdä, — kysyi Syvähenki toveriltaan.
— Lähden tästä Hua Jiniin ja astun kapinallisten joukkoon. Ties

sitten, mitä kohtalo osakseni suo.
— Niinhän se on, hyvä veli, — virkkoi Syvähenki ja kaivoi

arvokkaan lautasen matkamytystään. — Ottakaa tämä, sillä saatte
jonkun verran eväitä itsellenne.
Kylä ei ollut vielä kovinkaan kaukana heidän takanaan, kun tiensä

erosivat. Siinä he heittivät jäähyväiset toisilleen ja läksivät sitten
kumpikin omalle taholleen.
Lo Ta rupeaa vihannestarhan vartiaksi.
Lähes kymmenen päivän kuluttua Lo Ta saapui pääkaupunkiin.

Hän asteli väkirikkaan kaupungin katuja pitkin katsellen hartaasti
ympärilleen ja kysellen myymälöistä »Suuren saarnaajan» luostaria.
Vihdoinkin hän löysi luostarin ja astui vierassuojaan. Eräs munkki

ilmotti hänen tulostaan luostarin sairaanhoitajalle, joka ilmaantui pian
vierassuojaan. Mutta kun tämä näki vieraan uljaan ryhdin, rautaisen
sauvan ja miekan sekä nuo suuret matkamytyt, niin pelottipa häntä
aika lailla. Hän malttoi kuitenkin pian mielensä ja kysyi mistä
»kunnioitettava veli» tulee. Syvähenki heitti sauvansa ja

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Futures of Anti-Racism: Paradoxes of

Deracialization in Brazil, South Africa,

One Hundred Years of Social Protection: The Changing

Migrant Traders in South Africa: Migrant Traders in

History of South Africa Thula Simpson

Strategies of Financial Regulation: Divergent

History of South Africa: From 1902 to the Present Thula

Finance Capitalism and Income Inequality in the

The Decolonial Turn in Media Studies in Africa and the

The Dynamics of Natural Satellites of the Planets

Ian Law Joaze Bernardino-Costa

Mapping Global Racisms

Credit line: Ian Thuillier Photography

4 The Retreat from Deracialization in the UK139

5 Challenging Racism in Sweden195

Ian Law and Mapping Global Racisms265

James Beresford University of Leeds, Leeds, UK

Ioanna Blasko Department of Social and Economic Geography,

Joaze Bernardino Costa Department of Sociology, University of

Ian Law School of Sociology and Social Policy, University of Leeds,

Mayya Shmidt Department of Sociology, Uppsala University,

Shirley Anne Tate Sociology Department, University of Alberta,

Nikolay Zakharov School of Social Sciences, Södertörn University,

Table 3.1 Characteristics of the Brazilian racial state between 1888

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 1

NHRIs are constrained by external factors including the provision of

deracialization is informed by these theoretical considerations. Racism is

local politics in certain national contexts—the re-emergence of the dis-

necessary as Sandra Fredman (2001) has argued in recognition of the

 outh Africa: Deracialization

Brazil: Competing ‘Mixing’ and Affirmation

has been an upsurge of racial animosities as they attempt to avoid men-

The UK: Aggressive Racial Majoritarianism

manifestations of discrimination (‘race’, sex, gender identity, age, sexual-

Sweden: Paradoxes of Racialization

Sweden shifted from a race-biology discourse, through the official ‘color-­

dismantling of racism—through the mobilization of a series of global

as not all areas experiencing racialization have witnessed colonialism or in

What is racism in a settler-colonial context like South Africa where the

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 15

In post-apartheid South Africa it’s the continued delusion of white superi-

Non-­racialism and the ‘rainbow nation’ are non-performatives (Ahmed

are intertwined and critiqued. However, deracialization as a concept and

 on-racialism: From 1930s’ Cape Town

non-­racialism was also about ‘non-collaboration with apartheid, [theirs

Professor André Keet, Chair Ministerial Oversight Committee on Transformation in South

African Universities, Director CriSHET, NMU.

inequality in contemporary South African society in which ‘the colour of

majority state keeps white supremacy active within South Africa as we

The ‘fundamental problem is a world where white people are on top,

inherited from the Apartheid regime, the inequity in land distribution

 nti-racism: Constitution and Legislation

Further, closed mentalities had been produced by the sequestration of the

need to continue to be proactively antiracist’. This view of the difficulty

The Special Rapporteur noted a rise in xenophobia in 1999 and it

The post-apartheid South African society as per Section 1 of the 1996

The sequestration of the land and continuing Black disadvantage make

Sandton [Johannesburg Municipality] or Summerstrand [Gqeberha] for

4 The Retreat from Deracialization in the UK139

5 Challenging Racism in Sweden195

Ian Law and Mapping Global Racisms265

outh Africa: Deracialization

Brazil: Competing ‘Mixing’ and Affirmation

The UK: Aggressive Racial Majoritarianism

Sweden: Paradoxes of Racialization

Sweden shifted from a race-biology discourse, through the official ‘color-

Non-racialism and the ‘rainbow nation’ are non-performatives (Ahmed

on-racialism: From 1930s’ Cape Town

non-racialism was also about ‘non-collaboration with apartheid, [theirs

nti-racism: Constitution and Legislation