Redress is not revenge: Understanding the need for equality in South Africa
. Lorenzo Davids is the Executive Director of Urban Issues Consulting.
Image: Supplied
There are not 142 race-based laws on the statute books in South Africa in 2025. From 1652 to 1910, South Africa was colonised by the Dutch East India Company and later by the English.
The colonisation of the land and its indigenous people was characterised by brutality towards Africans and unlimited privilege for Europeans. It's a privilege that still reaps benefits for white people today. Currently, 62% of the management positions in the South African economy are held by whites, while being only 7% of the population.
From 1910 to 1994, for eighty-four years, South Africa was governed by internationally condemned race laws that dispossessed Black, Coloured and Indian citizens from full participation in politics, economics, education and all other aspects of civil life in the land of their birth. Race-based laws were the bedrock of Apartheid South Africa.
Black bodies were buried in unmarked graves across South Africa, while the brandy and braai fires of Apartheid security forces celebrated another terrorist killed. Most of white South Africa did not bat an eye at the torturous deaths of black people. They braaied while we buried.
There are not 142 race-based laws on the statute books in South Africa in 2025. For decades, colonisation taught all of us that white privilege was a right, and that racial equality was a threat. It was in the DNA of colonisation. Colonisation indoctrinated thousands of Black, Coloured and Indian people to believe this lie, and many still do so today.
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The mandate of our new Constitution is to fix the lies, undo oppression and bring universal equality. It is called redress. It's not racism. Neither is it reverse racism nor revenge. However, the system of privilege will fight to the death to preserve its gains.
The system of privilege will tarnish redress. It will protect its continued power and make its own stories filled with victimhood. The redress laws are there to provide access, opportunity and equity for those who have been subjected to three centuries of physical and psychological dehumanisation, which has left scars that will take years to heal. But as the saying goes, equality can feel like oppression for those who have lived lives of privilege. Most white people don't want to acknowledge the scars of their oppression on black people.
There are not 142 race-based laws on the statute books in South Africa in 2025. That's a lie. Whether Elon Musk, Donald Trump or The Institute of Race Relations say it is, it remains a lie. There are laws on the statute books to fix the consequences of historical discrimination still embedded in the system.
Black people must see the importance of continuing to engage their former oppressors and the current privileged in far more meaningful and strategic dialogues. To not do to them what they did to us.
To not only seek to make political announcements from podiums but to show a greater humanity that humanises our oppressors. We should not use the redress laws as a sledgehammer but as a craftsman's tool to design something beautiful everyone can admire.
I frequently experience the continued arrogance of the former oppressors who inject their very narrow, ill-informed narratives as the only narrative that everyone must regard as the truth. Completely oblivious of their continued privilege and dominance in all aspects of South African life, they talk like they are the victims.
Is a new South African humanity possible through redress? I hope it is. In the image of the towering and powerful Nelson Mandela's visit to the diminutive and cloistered Betsie Verwoerd in 1995, I saw how we can begin to do redress without revenge. We need a new bravery to stand together at the metaphoric South African pothole and there, together, design the plans to fix the injustice of our past and the incompetence of our present failures. For those who are hard of hearing, redress is not revenge.
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