Hatred thrives in nationhosting anti-racism meet

By M.S. Prabhakara

CAPE TOWN, AUG 6. Even as the issues around the agenda for the forthcoming World Conference against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance (Durban, August 31-September 7) are being debated and bargained over in Geneva, all these evils remain well and thriving in the host country.

Indeed, hardly a day passes without an atrocity with clear racial dimensions involving all the colours of the South African rainbow.

The two latest incidents, both of which happened last week, are merely illustrative of the persistence of racism. In the first incident which took place in George in Western Cape, Ms. Wanda Stoffberg, a white woman who runs a meat shop catering to a largely black clientele, was attacked by two balaclava- donned men and had the letter 'k' carved on her chest.

According to Ms. Stoffberg, who is apparently involved in a zoning battle with the local council, her attackers, who were white and whom she recognised, called her a ``kaffirboetie'' while carving her up.

This venomous term of abuse, literally meaning ``little brother of a kaffir'' whose closest idiomatic meaning would be ``nigger lover'', is part of the standard hate speech used by unrestructured racists against those whites who are not as racist as themselves.

The second incident which took place in Johannesburg on Thursday last week, in which a motor cyclist who clipped the side mirror of a car was shot and killed by the driver of the car in the city centre.

Needless to say, the motorcyclist was black, the driver of the car white.

Incidents of road rage, culminating in physical attacks and even murder, are not uncommon in this country; the killer in such a case in Cape Town last year where both the perpetrator and the victim were whites was sentenced to 10 years imprisonment.

The incident last week, however, also had a clear racial dimension, evident as much in the abuses hurled by the car driver against the motorcyclist as in the unvarnished comments on the country's leading website canvassing opinion on such incidents. Even more tellingly, the killer has been released on a bail of rands 5,000.

But then, as much as racism, xenophobia too is rife in this country, though xenophobic incidents are not often highlighted, especially if these involve illegal migrants from other African countries.

Xenophobia, touching the black majority as both perpetrators and victims, is an even more sensitive problem than straightforward racism involving whites as perpetrators and blacks as victims.

It is true that South Africa since the advent of democracy has attracted many black and white migrants, economic and political refugees, legal as well as illegal, seeking jobs and political asylum.

However, the all-too common manifestation of this xenophobia is that an African, even a legitimate black South African citizen, whose pigmentation is markedly darker than the ``average'' black South African complexion, is routinely hassled by the police on suspicion of being an illegal migrant.

The onus of establishing his legitimacy is always on the ``suspect''. There have been several incidents where well-known black South Africans have been subjected to such humiliation on the streets of Cape Town and Johannesburg.

However, the indignation that follows whenever such an incident involving a South African black takes place is seldom evident when migrants from other African countries are involved.

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Section  : International
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