Cape Town - A waitress who was denied a tip in an Observatory restaurant apparently because of her skin colour has become the focus of two international crowd-funding campaigns, which has seen scores of supporters tipping her more than a collective R21 000.
The campaigns, which began on Friday, ironically sparked a second race row.
Also Read: ‘We give tip when you return the land’
Some view the waitress, 24-year-old Ashleigh Schultz, as a symbol of white privilege, and say similar action has not been taken for black people who experience racism daily.
On Saturday Weekend Argus could not contact Schultz, who was said to be shocked and overwhelmed by the response.
She is set to receive the money raised from one of the campaigns tomorrow.
The controversial Rhodes Must Fall activist behind the racially-charged restaurant incident, Ntokozo Qwabe, who previously campaigned to remove a Cecil John Rhodes statue at Oxford, wants another fundraiser to launch.
“I’m expecting a parallel fundraising campaign for the hundreds of years of actual (not imagined) black pain white people have inflicted (and continue to inflict) on black people’s bodies.
“I am talking about hundreds of years of enslavement, lynching, colonisation & ongoing neocolonisation and capitalist exploitation of black bodies,” he said on Facebook yesterday.
He posted his Facebook account was reported by “white supremacists” so he had set up another.
Qwabe initially sparked a heated race debate on the platform on Thursday when he posted about how Schultz cried at Obz Café, where she was working as a waitress. He said instead of tipping her, he and friends presented her with a bill saying: “WE WILL GIVE TIP WHEN YOU RETURN THE LAND.”
The incident received attention as far afield as the UK, with the Daily Mail and others reporting on it.
It also fuelled debate on Twitter about whether Qwabe had acted fairly.
In a turn of events on Friday evening, three Twitter users created a crowd-funding campaign.
Roman Cabanac, a co-host of the podcast Renegade Report aired on online station CliffCentral, began it with his coworker Jonathan Witt and a guest on the podcast, Sihle Ngobese, Social Development MEC Albert Fritz’s spokesman.
“We started the fundraising to assist the waitress in question and, more generally, to show the Rhodes Must Fall movement has become somewhat estranged from their intentions,” Cabanac said.
“They are taking out their frustrations on ordinary private citizens.”
Within two minutes of the campaign starting, R150 had been raised. “The intention was to raise R1 000. The response has been overwhelming. All donations were sent from Twitter users,” Cabanac said.
Donations had been received locally and from countries like England, Canada and Germany. Yesterday afternoon R15 036 had been raised.
A second fundraiser, entitled “Tip the ‘Ntokozo Qwabe’ Waitress”, was created by others on the website GoFundMe. By on Saturday afternoon R5 803 had been raised.
On Saturday Gavin Hagger, the owner of Obz Café who on Friday expressed his disgust at the incident, said he welcomed the campaigns. “What a fantastic way to reply… I said to (Schultz) that she can now buy a piece of land for herself.”
Many Twitter and Facebook users also welcomed the campaigns, but others did not.
The local Rhodes Must Fall movement, which successfully campaigned to have a Cecil John Rhodes statue removed from UCT last year, waded into the Twitter debate.
It tweeted: “What’s offensive is if it were a Black person it (the restaurant incident) would never have meant anything. Coz that, & more, happens everyday.”
Sunday Argus