Quote of the week
Early in 2016, a racist outburst by a white woman in KwaZulu-Natal, Penny Sparrow, ridiculing Black beachgoers as ‘monkeys’, and announcing that thenceforth she would ‘address the [B]lacks of South Africa as monkeys’, published in her online profile, was quickly disseminated countrywide. It convulsed South Africa in shame and acrid anger. The [Constitutional] Court was not unaffected. Previous members of the Constitutional Court took comfort in reflecting, with evident satisfaction, on the absence of racially loaded and racially defined splits. Dramatically, these now fractured the Court.
"Rainbows and Realities: Justice Johan Froneman in the Explosive Terrain of Linguistic and Cultural Rights" - Constitutional Court Review
Giving credit where credit is due
DA MP, Annelie Lotriet, seems to be a brave woman, risking alienating some of those who voted for her party “merely” to take a principled but necessary stand. I see she issued the following statement. As someone who as goaded the DA for not taking a stand on issues of racism, I have to give credit where it is due. So here is the statement in full.
Hofmeyr comments: DA deplores prejudiced views
The Democratic Alliance (DA) deplores the deeply racialist comments published by musician Steve Hofmeyr.
Hofmeyr’s statement that black South Africans “suck up the propaganda of entitlement” in order to “justify their brutality” is profoundly repugnant. It demonstrates deep-seated prejudiced views that are completely inconsistent with the values that inform our constitutional state, it lowers the standard of constructive political and social debate, and it sets back efforts to build a truly nonracial, compassionate South African society.
Regrettably, this statement shows there are still South Africans who are severely detached from the values of modern South African society, and who hold prejudicial views about their fellow citizens.
Every South African who is committed to building a compassionate society should reject Hofmeyr’s comments. They are more reminiscent of a bygone era of racial domination under Apartheid than the kind of conversation one expects to hear in a multiracial democracy in 2010.
Statement issued by Annelie Lotriet, MP, Democratic Alliance Shadow Minister of Arts and Culture, December 7 2010
