Dominated by centuries of oppression and exploitation of people by using power and superiority based on perceived racial differences, the negative effects of this system are still prevalent today including gross social inequality, grinding poverty, family dislocations through migrant labour and several more examples of suffering and trauma decades after the abolishment of Apartheid. It is the mission of SAPI/SAPA by promoting psychoanalysis in South Africa to contribute towards the transformation of this iniquitous system. 

SAPA/SAPI would therefore caution the use of ‘race’ as a categorisation of peoples identities without critical considerations of its discredited application of classification during Apartheid. As South African psychoanalytic psychotherapists and psychoanalysts we accept that the negative effects of institutionalised racism will probably take decades more to transform, however, our idea of one race, the human race should be seen as both a contribution towards redress of the damage and a unifying concept for nation building. We are against the gratuitous use of race as a concept to classify people and committed to the promotion of basic human rights and dignity for all as enshrined in the South African constitution.