Listening to the silent majority

[26]

Nimrod Mkele (68) was the first black scientist to obtain a degree in psychology from the University of Natal. He now runs a Johannesburg

[p. 33]

Consultancy firm placing blacks in jobs with mainly white firms. Black Enterprise magazine ran a cover-story on him.^20.

‘It's vital,’ he told me, ‘that blacks move as rapidly as possible into the future without being hung up on obsessions about apartheid. Poverty has plagued blacks all their lives. This was not just a result of apartheid alone, or of modern political factors. Poverty arose through contact with the West. Whites used us as hewers of wood and drawers of water. Native policy in the 19th century was a means of ensuring that blacks were kept away from productive activity. For instance, the Land Act of 1913 pushed blacks out of productive activity on farms. One of the values of uprooting poverty is that it prevents us from sweeping disturbing facts about poverty under the carpet.’ He phrased it as follows: ‘It must be understood that state policy in South Africa from the time of Jan van Riebeeck to Hendrik Verwoerd has been to institutionalise black poverty. Both the State and whites in general must therefore demonstrate that they do not condone poverty of any sort. A black man's poverty is a constant drain on the entire community. This shared realisation would enable blacks and whites to plan and build together.’

20. Black Enterprise magazine, volume 19, 1989