We must not allow bigoted pseudo-intellectuals to stereotype an entire population group like this, says Max du Preez.
Nomasomi Gloria Kente is an ordinary working class woman. As a domestic worker in class-conscious South Africa – and black on top of it – she doesn’t have a lot of power.
But last week she became a hero with a powerful and inspiring message to South Africans: our constitution gives all of us power, now let’s use it against those who trample on our rights.
If there is anyone who doesn’t know who Gloria Kente is, she took a white man, André van Deventer, to the Equality Court for insulting and racially abusing her. Van Deventer was ordered to apologise and pay her R50 000. He also faces a criminal trial. Good.
Another domestic worker, Cynthia Joni, was allegedly beaten up by a white man, Tim Osrin, while walking to work in Kenilworth in Cape Town.
Osrin said he thought she was a prostitute. He has already appeared in court and lost his job. I hope Joni also succeeds in forcing him to publicly apologise and pay her a lot of money.
I hope other domestic workers and people without a lot of power get the message that it is possible to stand up against racists and bullies.
It is time we started getting more militant in holding people accountable with the constitution as our weapon. The constitution determines much more than property rights and a division of power.
It guarantees that each one of us has the right to human dignity and shall not be subjected to any form of discrimination. Racism, cultural chauvinism, misogyny and classism are the enemies of the society we set out to build 20 years ago. We should fight these enemies with greater conviction and energy than we have done so far. We should become far more intolerant of intolerance.
One of the manifestations of racism is stereotyping or racial/ethnic profiling: ascribing characteristics to a whole group using anecdotal evidence.
This type of prejudice determines the values and attitudes of people according to their ethnic group or culture. At its crudest, it perpetuates stereotypes such as virile and patriarchal Zulus with a penchant for war, money-grabbing Jews, cheating Indians, lazy Shangaans, racist Afrikaner bullies, etcetera.
Many South Africans are guilty of this bigotry. But it has long been regarded as socially unacceptable in public – unless, it seems, the target group are Afrikaners or whites.
Then it’s open season.
They were the apartheid brutes; rules don’t apply to them. This attitude undermines the national project to combat racism and sexism.
It is wrong and counter-productive.
A good example was the opinion piece “White masculinity since 1994" in the Sunday Independent by a top official in the Presidency, Busani Ngcaweni.
In other societies it would have been met with outrage.
In fact, if that kind of analysis were applied to any other population group, Ngcaweni would have been branded a dangerous bigot and a fool.
Let me give you a taste. The Oscar Pistorius trial “lifted a veil on the socio-cultural existential preoccupations of middle class Afrikaner men which includes love of guns, fast cars, blondes and other excesses”, writes Ngcaweni.
Afrikaner men had evolved from a love of khaki shorts, bakkies, boerewors and beer during the apartheid era to cognac and upmarket restaurants, but “rage and the pistol remain”.
Afrikaner women live a “marginal” existence as “minors” under the “bubble of deceit and conceit” and do not question authority. “Abuse was as prevalent under apartheid as it is under democracy.” And here’s a gem: Afrikaner women “could not inherit property”! (What planet is this guy from?)
There you have it: Afrikaner men are all gun-crazy, racist wife beaters and the women are obedient housewives. So the next time you meet one of them, remember this and handle them accordingly.
What utter, utter stupid and bigoted rubbish.
Ngcaweni even missed the fact that Pistorius grew up as an English-speaker and went to the prestigious Pretoria Boys’ High School.
His unsavoury friends we came to know of during his trial were all English-speakers. Of course patriarchy, misogyny and racism are problems in Afrikaner society.
The obvious fact that these negatives apply to all other cultures in South Africa – indeed, Africa and much of the rest of the world – does not mean we should not fight it tooth and nail. But we must not allow bigoted pseudo-intellectuals to stereotype an entire population group like this and insult strong, successful Afrikaner women – including my three sisters, my wife and my two daughters, all of them feisty feminists. They will eat Ngcaweni for breakfast.
Afrikaners are everything between Beyers Naudé and Van Zyl Slabbert on the one end and Eugene Terre’Blanche and the Modimolle Monster on the other.
They’re just people.
Stop this nonsense.
* Max du Preez is an author and columnist.
** The views expressed here are not necessarily those of Independent Media.