Penny Sparrow and her racist comments did not emerge in a vacuum. They are the inevitable outcome of a racist society that would not confront the reality of it being racist.
It is an odd situation we have in South Africa that one must not speak about racism for fear of upsetting those who say they are themselves opposed to racism. Some of these people threaten to withdraw their support for businesses and media outlets if they employ people who talk about racism.
They use the “you are throwing the race card” very easily to block any conversation about racism in South Africa. They hope by so doing, they will make the problem go away.
Unfortunately, like the skeleton in the family closet, there is always that one relative whose loose tongue – especially when inebriated – makes wishing the issue away a futile exercise.
They – in the form of the likes of Penny Sparrow – blurt it out when most inconvenient; embarrassing the family and the guests seated around the dinner table. They always apologise the following day as they grope for an antidote to whatever they had that made them embarrassing to themselves and those associated with them.
If we are serious about dealing with racism decisively, let’s talk about racism. Let us call it by its true name.
Forget how it does not matter whether a person is “pink, green or blue” because, in reality, we do not have such categories of people in South Africa. To talk about “green, blue or pink” people is itself a denial of racism.
To not see colour in a country where almost everything can be predicted by colour, from who is most likely to rob you to who is most likely to be CEO of a JSE listed company, is to be in denial of race as a factor in South Africa.
South Africa should enact laws that make apartheid denialism a crime, in the same way that countries like Austria, Belgium, Czech Republic, France, Germany, Hungary, Israel, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, Poland, Romania have made Holocaust denialism a crime.
Lawmakers in these countries were not trying to be politically correct. Having experienced or being affected by the Holocaust, they knew well just how flippant language by demagogues can lead to a national bloodbath.
We too have seen what happens when racism takes root and becomes a way of life. It is not pretty – and such a law would probably go against the right of free speech as enshrined in the constitution.
But the limitation to the right to free speech might be a small price to pay to avert an ever increasing possibility of a race war in South Africa as unresolved race issues prop up. Furthermore, we know from anti-smoking laws that sometimes you have to legislate to make people behave decently in the company of others.
But what about black racism?
No sensible person would argue against the fact that blacks are capable of racism. Black people, like everyone else, are capable of any other prejudice that other people are capable of.
But the issue in South Africa, historically speaking, has never been the racism of blacks. It was always anti-black racism.
It is like pointing out the fact that there are cases where women abuse men they are in relationships with as an attempt to avoid the basic reality that the societal problem is misogyny and anti-women sexism.
Even calling affirmative action and black economic empowerment reverse racism is untrue.
In both cases, the law – endorsed by no less than the Constitutional Court as just and equitable – says only when candidates are tied up on every other level with regards to their educational qualifications, experience and so on, will aspects such as their colour, sex or disability relative to who else is in the employ, kick in.
While the rapacious corruption by political elites often gives racists a leg to stand on, it is important to note that anti-black racism predates the corruption.
It is objective fact that the dehumanisation of black people happened when they were removed from their lands, forced into labour concentration camps that were mine hostels and later removed from their neighbourhood in uMkhumbane/Cato Manor (Durban), Roodepoort West (Johannesburg) District Six (Cape Town) for no other reason than that they were too close to where whites lived.
The same anti-black dehumanisation continued when a series of laws were created to intentionally give black people an inferior education, health system, lower wages than whites doing a similar job or having similar education.
Racism will be defeated when all of us declare that it will not be in our name that the bigotry continues. Anti-racism heroes will be those who like Don Johnstone – a white male – stood up to speak out against a racist who had called Blitzboks’ Seabelo Senatla a “baboon”. The villains are all those who seek to explain or justify racism.