Cape Town – A Wynberg resident has come under fire from the EFF for insinuating black people are monkeys.
The resident, known only as Bismillah, shared a video on WhatsApp of monkeys frolicking and swimming in shallow water, to which another user, known only as Mama, replied by saying “Clifton Beach”.
The EFF has been one of the organisations demonstrating against a private security company that allegedly evicted people from Clifton’s 4th beach.
Beachgoers accused Professional Protection Alternatives of instructing people to leave the beach at 8pm on December 23. This resulted in the #ReclaimClifton campaign and a string of protests, including one by the EFF.
Mama would not comment when approached for comment on her response to the video clip.
Bismillah said the video was “sent as a joke and entertainment”.
“The group (the video was share on) is a chit-chat kind of group on which residents share all kinds of information, jokes, images and videos. We joke about topical stuff all the time, but the group is not racist and users send stuff on there taking the mickey out of each other.”
EFF provincial chairperson Melikhaya Xego said: “We are aware of the recent footages of monkeys swimming regarded to be black people on Clifton Beach and as well as some pictures of holocausts that took place where black people used to be murdered by white settlers. All these are aimed at defocusing our society towards nation building.”
The resident shared a video on WhatsApp of monkeys frolicking and swimming in shallow water, to which another user replied by saying “Clifton Beach”. Image: Screengrab
Xego labelled the distributors of the video as cowards. “It is done by a group of cowards who have never been at the receiving end of such inhumane treatments in our lifetime, neither been held accountable for the injustices meted out to black people.
“Nowhere in a world governed by traditional and Roman Dutch law will you find perpetrators being exempted from their heinous crimes without any restorative approach with which society agrees or at least is informed about.
“This is a sign that some are still hell-bent on the ill deeds of the past that resulted in them being unfair beneficiaries at the expense of black victims of such crimes that went unpublished.
“We are facilitating legal processes against those who are leading this and we will not rest until they pay dearly for their unwarranted actions.”