Racists won’t stop me going places

Police in the US, during unrest triggered by the shooting of a black teenager by a white police officer. Protesters say the shooting was motivated by racism. Picture: Jeff Roberson

Police in the US, during unrest triggered by the shooting of a black teenager by a white police officer. Protesters say the shooting was motivated by racism. Picture: Jeff Roberson

Published Aug 20, 2014

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If we retreat from spaces deemed white spaces we abet racism, says Fikile-Ntsikelelo Moya.

Pretoria - Last Saturday my friend and I went to Loftus stadium to watch the Boks versus Pumas match. For the second time at that stadium a white fan found it necessary to tell us that there was no football match on the day.

The first time was at a Bulls Super Rugby match when someone made a snide comment about “ken die mense daar is nie sokker vanaand” (Do these people know there is no soccer here tonight?)

We ignored them.

Last weekend a man, probably in his thirties, deemed it necessary to point out that Sundowns were not playing.

I figured he thought he was trying to be funny. In fact, he was being racist.

For him, the only reason black South Africans would be at Loftus would be to watch a football match.

Like his types a few months earlier, Loftus is theirs. Darkies must watch “sokker” and not contaminate their hallowed white spaces.

To be categoric: the sentiments by the two white male rugby supporters were racist.

I have argued elsewhere and will repeat here that there is a perception among some white people that unless you lynch negroes in a plantation in Jim Crow America, you are not really a racist.

They are wrong.

Racism exists in many forms and not all of them leave physical scars.

It is racist when young women at Tukkies polish their faces black and stuff things under their skirts.

It is not, as some denialists would have it, just a little juvenile fun.

South Africa and apparently other areas where black people have been under the thumb of white supremacy, suffer from an acute case of white racism denial.

One of the reasons this denial has persisted is because many of us are too polite, too politically correct to call it by its name.

The unrest in Ferguson, Missouri, in the US where a policeman shot dead an unarmed young man reminds us of how precarious the lives of black people can be at the hands of whites who have conferred on themselves the right to decide whether black people live or die; watch rugby or sokker.

That is why to this day in South Africa and in the US “driving or walking while black” is deemed by some police officers to be grounds for their attention.

Some rally behind Nelson Mandela’s famous statements about being “against white domination and against black domination” without appreciating that until now, history has not known “black” domination of white people.

At best, Mandela’s stance with regards to black domination is a theoretic problem, whereas the effects of white domination are for the world to see.

Of course there are black racists. To spend time and energy on this would be to partake in a diversionary tactic.

There are black racists just as there are women who abuse men.

An honest conversation must however be about a more pervasive wrong. As matters stand, that is white racism.

For too long black people have been bullied into keeping silent about racism. When they do they are accused of having a chip on their shoulder or my favourite – of being angry as if black people have nothing to be angry about.

When I shared my experience on social media, a friend suggested that I stop going to rugby matches “for peace’s sake”.

I disagree with this “peace sake” argument.

As I pointed out to him, each time we retreat from public spaces; refuse to consider living in certain neighbourhoods or going to sporting events because we fear we will encounter racism, we collaborate in the delaying of meaningful transformation.

When we say South Africa belongs to all, we include the rugby fields, the corporate boardrooms as much as we do the beaches and schools.

To concede to racists is to accept being controlled by our moral inferiors.

Racism, as with all other forms of bigotry, is a manifestation of an inferiority complex.

Nobody with a healthy self-identity and a positive self-image would need the protection of their skin or genitals to feel more complete a human being than those who do not look like them.

As for me, I have not attended my last rugby match.

In the same way that the racists had to get used to people who look like me settling in “their” neighbourhoods, schools and country club, they must get used to faces like mine at “their” other events.

This is not even because the black South African rugby union is older than the white one, thus making nonsense of rugby being a “white sport”. It is about going where I want when I want.

It is about breathing to life the slogan we chanted as youngsters that this country is indeed Izwe Lethu, our land.

* Fikile-Ntsikelelo Moya is the executive editor at the Pretoria News. Follow him on Twitter @fikelelom

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