The South African Coalition for Cultural Diversity (SACCD) – on behalf of its constituent member organisations – wishes to express our collective horror at the events that have unfolded in Johannesburg – and elsewhere in the country - during the course of the past two weeks.

 

We believe that the campaign of violence mounted against immigrants from the rest of Africa (as well as a range of South African ethnic groups) represents a profound crisis for our democracy.  This crisis is a sign of our collective and tragic failure as South Africans to address – or even properly acknowledge – the underlying problems that we face as a society.  Our failure to provide a home and refuge to our brothers, sisters and children from the rest of the continent can in our view only be understood as a failure on our part to have built a true sense of South Africa as a nation, as opposed to a chaos of conflicting interests, pathology's and resentments.

In the present situation it is easy to point fingers and assign blame – to particular ethnic groups, to the police, to our government and its social and economic policies and programmes.  We believe that it is critical that the perpetrators of these crimes be swiftly identified, arrested and held accountable for these atrocities. However, we recognise and acknowledge that the present crisis is one in which we are all implicated.

We call on all our leaders at all levels to mount a visible campaign of intervention in the communities that are currently traumatised by this violence.  We believe that our leaders should be in the streets, actively intervening to bring an end to the present carnage.

We call on all of our membership, especially those involved in the Arts and Culture sector, and the wider society, to play an active part in relieving the suffering of those who have been on the receiving end of these attacks.  Now is the time to engage in constructive debate and concerted action among ourselves as to how we can realise the ideal of a just and humane society in which cultural diversity flourishes, and in which the events of the past two weeks can have no place.

The SACCD is a recently formed civil society body representing the interests of a wide range of membership-based organisations in the cultural sector in South Africa.  It has a specific mandate to address issues related to the implementation of the UN Convention on the Diversity of Cultural Expressions, to which the South African government is a signatory. This statement is issued by the National Executive of the Coalition.

For immediate release
Issued by: The National Executive of the South African Coalition for Cultural Diversity
www.saccd.org.za

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