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CNN WORLD REPORT
South Africa Proposes to Host World Conference on Racism
Aired August 19, 2001 - 14:23 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
SHIHAB RATTANSI, CNN ANCHOR: Well, South Africa is working to ease racial tension there as it proposed to host the world conference on racism. Groups from around the world will gather in Durban August 31 for the week-long conference. South Africans are still trying to break down the racial barriers and attitudes of the apartheid era. As United Nations Television reports, they are hoping to go come to terms with their past by focusing on the future.
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DAVID TERRESTER KANKAMIL TAHA, UNITED NATIONS TELEVISION CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): The new South Africa, seen through the eyes of its children, a country free from apartheid and racial discrimination. A country where everyone can live side by side, regardless of color, ethnic or religious background. Supported by the Danish Government and organized by the U.N. Department of Public Information, this exhibit forms part of an effort to get South African youth to confront an issue that has long divided their society: racism and racial discrimination.
SHASHI IHAROOR, U.N. DEPARTMENT OF PUBLIC INFORMATION: The United Nations Information Center in Pretoria has been extremely active in the preparations for the world conference against racism in Durban. What they are doing is to attempt to work with mass media and public opinion and nongovernmental organizations on the issues around the conference, and in particular with youth in South Africa, attempting both to help them to come to terms with the terrible experience of apartheid in their country's history.
TAHA: The campaign has also taken to the air waves. These youngsters come from very different backgrounds. They are expressing their own views about just how their country should proceed in the post- apartheid era.
Here in Johannesburg, Fairways Primary School has become a model for social integration since the country's non-racial constitution was implemented in 1994. The school accepts students irrerspective of race, culture or creed.
12-year-old Alistair Heald (ph) and Brunhilde Manesi (ph) are classmates.
DAVID SPENCE, FAIRWAYS PRIMARY SCHOOL PRINCIPAL: We are very open about our cultural diversity here, and everybody is encouraged to take a pride in who they are and what their origins are.
TAHA: As well as receiving regular academic education, students are encouraged to discuss all kinds of sensitive issues facing their country. Today, they are expressing their feelings on South African race relations for the future.
BRUNHILDE MANESI, STUDENT: The perfect new South Africa is where people live together, no blacks, no whites, no coloreds, no Indians -- just a nation of people living together in unity.
ALISTAIR HEALD, STUDENT: I think we come together uniting as one, as the nation should be. People are starting to realize how dangerous AIDS is -- not just AIDS, other diseases.
TAHA: To build stronger bonds between students and between their families, the school sponsors cultural programs outside the regular curriculum. This multicultural food festival reflects this spirit of tolerance the school advocates.
South Africa's experience of evils of apartheid and other forms of racism features strongly among issues at the world conference against racism convening in Durban in South Africa at the end of August. With U.N. TV, this report was prepared by David Terrister Kankamil Taha (ph) for CNN WORLD REPORT.
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