Listening to the silent majority

[51]

Nimrod Mkele: ‘There is in South Africa an urgent need to train managers. We do have a corps of well-trained managers available. But, as you know, our educational system is very backward. A lot of companies only pay lip-service to black advancement.’ In order not to bring up BMW again, I mentioned that Philips in Randburg was actively sending groups

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of black employees to Eindhoven in the Netherlands, to train them for future management positions in South Africa. Nimrod agreed: ‘There are indeed companies who do take the trouble to train black people. I do myself now and then some work for Philips. But, remember, there are often no whites available for positions required. Thus, taking on blacks for management is also a question of business survival, and not so much a question of charity towards blacks as some companies sometimes seem to imply, when they propagate black advancement. Therefore, let's face it: the economic survival of South Africa depends, in fact, on the training of large numbers of blacks.’

‘What then is the deal,’ I asked, ‘education first and revolution second?’ Psychologist Mkele: ‘They go together. Business development and training and education are taking place in an environment in which it is absolutely necessary to take political action as well. After all, every new development businesswise, is at the same time a political statement. Therefore, education and revolution work in tandem. The moment you are talking about improving education, you already apply revolutionary concepts.’ I asked him, ‘Isn't the chip in our heads the essence of our humanity? Apartheid reigns exclusively right up there. The coding of children's brains begins from the cradle and at six they already are programmed to believe and not to believe. The question is how to decode at a later age the “poison” brought into brains at an early age.’

I had expected from psychologist Mkele a relevant answer, but instead he said, ‘These arguments have been espoused for years. Remember when they did the intelligence testing on blacks and whites?’ I indeed did remember, since I had written a book on the subject, consisting of 28 international interviews on the nature of intelligence.^33. But I was not talking about this otherwise fascinating matter of human intelligence at all. I was referring to the functioning of the brain. Nimrod Mkele proceeded unperturbed, ‘Whites were supposedly brighter than blacks. My professor at the University of Natal wrote a paper at the time, that unless you make the environment equal, you cannot talk about inferior intelligence or inferior mind, since what you actually are testing are cultural variables. In so far as blacks and whites are successfully living together, I believe it's a matter of letting children of different

33. Over Intelligentie, AW Bruna Publishers, Holland (1981) or Sobre la Intelligenzia, AULA XII, Santillana, Madrid (1983)

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races grow up together and letting schools integrate wherever possible. Children have no hang-ups and that's all that is necessary. The United States is now the best example. Adults have attitudes left over from their past. I myself lived the larger part of my life through rigorous apartheid. Today, I am freely moving around, and enter white circles as well. Today, we talk to people as people, regardless of pigmentation.’ Did he believe that in this area progress was being made? ‘Oh yes,’ he replied, ‘there is progress, especially when I recall the types of situations I have grown up in. I realize, I have moved from the far low end to a position where I could talk to George Bush if need be.’