Racism Archives - Medialternatives

by davidrobertlewis - November 20, 2024December 18, 2024

Logan Case: High Court upholds ‘petty apartheid’

THE SITUATION is all too familiar. A 25-year-old black man Thabiso Danca, found that he was welcome and able to enter a Cape Town pub whenever accompanied by white colleagues. But without the gift of whiteness, he wasn’t even recognized at the door. The situation escalated when Danca, upset at being denied entry on Friday 1 December 2022 appealed to fellow lifesaver, Christopher Logan for assistance. According to a statement by the Pub, “the door personnel requested Danca’s identification to verify his age”

Frank’s door policy, like most pubs, is not under 21, “he failed to produce a valid ID and was denied entry to the pub.” It is clear from photographs that not only was Danca an adult, but he looked like an adult. This is not exactly a case of a ‘baby-faced’ teen appearing at a City venue and being denied entry, or a 21-year-old being confused with a 20-year-old, but rather an adult being told to beat it, because, well he isn’t white.

Given the context of ongoing race-based discrimination, (yes for all practical intents and purposes structural apartheid didn’t end in 1994, it merely lost any legal basis for its existence), Danca was rightfully upset at being treated as a minor. The words patronising and patron both have a similar pedigree, deriving from the Latin Pater, meaning ‘Father’. So we all get the gist of the central complaint, and the sequence of events which resulted in Logan ticking off staff and management in front of social media the very next day. The incident resulted in an altercation in which Logan was accused of ‘being the instigator, and the side-bar drama of who videoed who, from what angle, is of little consequence and absolutely not the crux of the matter.

This week owners of Hank’s Olde Irish Pub in Bree Street were ‘awarded R1.25 million in damages by the Western Cape High Court for ‘false accusations of racism on social media’

In retrospect, given Hank’s Pub’s ability to muster legal forces, it might not have been a good idea for the two friends to confront the Irish establishment directly. But here’s the rub, the entire ‘anti-racist’ movement which characterized the nation’s campuses for the past decade has literally advocated ‘confronting racism wherever and whenever it occurs‘. Yet the wobbly left have been rather silent on this account because the man being accused of defamation isn’t black?

This is not a lesson in how to go about filling out a discrimination claim, but one would have expected there to have been some effort made at tackling the central case, in this respect the SAHRC failed miserably, as the entire matter ended up coming a cropper on the strange assumption that video material of the later Saturday confrontation, the second incident, was somehow ‘the evidence’ of the first and vice versa, and of course, a ‘white person cannot experience racism’. Clearly Logan wasn’t the one being discriminated against here, he was acting out of solidarity with his companion. The fact of the denial of entry is not in dispute.

I very much doubt if one could ever persuade a jury comprising 12 citizens that a Saturday was the Friday in question, but we shall never know? (see below)

So once again our justice system turns out to be nothing more than an obstinate legal bureaucracy, in which the only issue for consideration was whether or not a ‘right of admission policy’, trumped any objections raised about the arbitrary application of a rule according to race-based criteria? All this while our law has been hijacked by libel lawyers intent on expanding the definition of libel law to include influencers and political activity?

Social media influencers not subject to press freedom?

The court has perversely ordered Christopher Michael Logan to pay the damages because he “accused John Papadakis of racism and shared a video on social media, claiming that his friend, Thabiso Danca, was denied entry to the pub because of his race.”

The social media outrage, according to the court, “led to significant reputational harm, financial losses and emotional distress for the pub and its co-owners, the Papadakis brothers”. The damages were awarded to Latari House (the operating company for Hank’s Olde Irish Pub) and brothers Viron and John Papadakis who, at that stage, were co-owners of the pub.:”

Since I have been unable to find any reference on SAFLII to the case, I am unable to read the exact wording of the decision, (anyone willing to assist here?) but from my own experience of dealing with the Western Cape division, the context in which racism occurs in our country has turned out to be of little consequence. This is the self-same division which trashed the TRC Report in 2010 and again in 2018, in the process dumping our Preamble. The Constitution is only in force when it comes to the Constitutional Court, and available to citizens at great cost it seems? The portraits of Judge President’s reaching all the way back to the old Cape Colony still line the High Court’s vaulted halls. Clearly such portraits belong in a museum?

More concerning is the manner in which ‘Papadakis and Co’, (or at least their supporters), have run a campaign before the courts, objecting to the pair’s membership of various student political organisations. You read that correctly, the latest tweets on X.com go so far as calling Logan an “EFF plant”, when the facts are both were members of DASO on campus, and so what? Our Constitution protects the right to membership of political parties irrespective of one’s race or social status?

The resulting miscarriage of justice is all too reminiscent of the manner in which apartheid officials banned student organisations and their members en masse during the 80s, without any opportunity for appeal, as officials continue to defend petty apartheid in our City.

Yes, our justice system has once again demonstrated that it lacks capacity to assess the facts when it comes to capital crimes and defamation cases. Where the West has a jury system, our legal system abolished jury trial in 1969, citing international embarrassment at the appearance of black persons before all-white juries. Closing down public participation in the justice process, lay-assessors are rarely used, the more so when tricky issues such as racism arise. Our courts all too often resort to a strategy known as ‘obfuscation of law’. The Logan decision merely bolsters this perception.

Then again, most Fridays are already Saturday when it comes to the Cape Bar?

SEE: Legal Storm over Irish Pub Racist Saga set to continue

SEE: Police Investigation Clears Pub Owners of Racism

by davidrobertlewis - July 27, 2024September 25, 2024

Gillian Schutte defends race labeling, toads

In the critically acclaimed film “BlacKkKlansman,” directed by Spike Lee, the term “toad” is ingeniously used to refer to a specific type of ‘white person’. The historical context of this term presents all sorts of problems but has been decoded by critics as a dramatic technique that ‘provides insight into the racial climate of the time and the profound impact of the civil rights movement’.

Traditionally associated with amphibians, toad is used as a code word by Lee’s ‘African American’ detective Ron Stallworth” to ‘identify racist and bigoted individuals’ within the Colorado Springs Police Department.

The tactic, essentially one of reverse psychology, sheds light on the “hateful language used by white supremacists to demean and dehumanize black individuals”

Unfortunately South Africa’s Gillian Schutte is not Hollywood’s Spike Lee — her adoption of counter-factual histories, bold language and narrative that appropriates the rhetoric of the radical black left, (without giving any credit), is merely repackaged by a ‘white person’ given some leeway to comment on the sensitive topic — with the result she is a firm favourite of today’s editors — those who may wish to see their own jaundiced views reflected back in print media.

There is thus a plethora of Schutte’s published writing in my country.

Her opinion pieces circulate online in their dozens in the aftermath of the GNU — all leading one into the arena of ersatz political analysis, of the kind delivered by feminists who may object to transexuality by misunderstanding gender. Sorry Gillian, it’s not all reducible to biology but rather a subject informed by legal definitions open to legislative scrutiny. Allowing a man to transition to a women and vice versa, is neither a denial of the suffragette movement nor would treating all humans as equals — judging a person on the basis of ones character not ones colour — be a negation of civil rights — quite the opposite.

Schutte appears oblivious to the problem presented by ‘race and gender’ from the perspective of the administration of law, and I speak here as a recipient of the idiocy of laws of my own country. Yes, she may object to non-racialism but invariably it is without bothering to examine the provenance of the term, within the Unity Movement and the racialisation of society which this movement opposes. (Read my piece here)

The same may be said of Schutte’s Hogwarts feminism.

Race slurs are the tactic of racists.

Need one remind readers that racial slurs by individuals, like the tactics of racialisation, have long been a tool of those who lack coherent arguments, or who seek to reduce the nuance and complexity of life into convenient soundbytes. Maintaining power by replacing patriarchy with matriarchy, rule by men, with rule by women, ranks as bad an idea as replacing ‘racialisation with more racialisation’, one form of hegemony with another. Hurt cannot be healed by more pain. An eye for an eye leaves the world blind.

I thus find myself constantly amazed, gobsmacked that Schutte is allowed inches of column space to spew her drivel, pontificating on a subject for which she provides very little context and history, save an appeal to her own authority.

While those who were on the frontlines of the anti-apartheid movement and its campaign against the racialisation policies of apartheid may be a dying breed, one should never forget the premise of the Unity Movement — there is only one stream of common humanity, not separate streams resulting in different species of human, as the apartheid doctor Piet Koornhof would have it.

Race Theories rejected by science

The assertions made by Unity won out when the multi-regionalist theory of human evolution (the idea that the races spontaneously evolved in different parts of the globe resulting in mutual claims of superiority/inferiority) was finally shot down, alongside apartheid race eugenics, by the paleoscience of the nineties.

Sadly race science has seen an upsurge, there have been many attempts in recent years to resurrect the idea of ‘separateness in lineage’, those who seek to rebrand the theory to explain the presence of ‘Neanderthal alleles‘ and thus links to sub-populations seemingly external to our common human genome. But this tinkering with interpretation of data reminds one of the rephrasing of the specific ambitions of the anti-apartheid movement by millennial radicals into a more generalist claim involving ethnicity and religion, and a tragic process whereby the NGK is allowed to escape its role merely so Christianity may triumph?

The hackneyed arguments brought by Schutte that ‘dropping race labels are somehow akin to dropping gender labels‘, or egad, promoting non-racialism is somehow a ‘ betrayal of the struggle for democracy and human rights’, since it allegedly results in ‘an embrace of colonialism” by our GNU‘, must be rejected given the particular circumstances of our democracy. A state of affairs which is anything but PW Botha’s Tricameral Parliament — a dismal political experiment which comprised separate houses for each designated ‘race group’ alongside a reform of racialisation laws to reflect a new type of racist othering.

Strip away Schutte’s radical invective and all what one gets is a ‘lesson about toads delivered by a toad’, and if that makes one an enemy of amphibians then so be it.

READ: If everyone is a racist, nobody is a racist

READ It’s 2023, enter the ‘woke’ anti-everything brigade

READ: Yoga ‘wokeism’ misses the whole point of post-modernity.

by davidrobertlewis - January 8, 2023July 29, 2023

It’s 2023, enter the ‘woke’ anti-everything brigade

NEVER in my wildest dreams would I expect to be confronted by a ‘woke’ self-proclaimed Anti-Racist in my own home over the festive season. The young man from New York, is “studying colonialism and apartheid’, proceeds to challenge me with some academic BS, by throwing race labels around.

In particular he insists on calling me ‘white’ in front of my Rainbow household and busies himself with a George Floyd narrative about how his ‘unique black experience’ is particular to his ‘skin colour’ ‘ and how all the stats equal to non-racialism being dead, which to him is merely a ‘neo-liberal’ concept. You can read my experience of apartheid race labelling here

I explain that Steven Bantu Biko was correct in his analysis that blackness is not the result of skin pigmentation but rather a mental attitude. I don’t get very far in narrating the story of the Unity Movement as it relates to Black Consciousness and Non-racialism. Instead he takes umbrage and insists that he doesn’t know who Biko is, as if the name of a key figure in the anti-apartheid movement means absolutely nothing to him. It is clear he is being totally ignorant and throwing offensive race labels around.

The incident lead me to pen the following:

Note to self, when confronted by the next woke anti-racist nitwit issuing a confused assault against non-racialism as yes, ‘nothing more than racism’, remember to remind the aforementioned idiot that non-racialism is not ‘non-racism’ per se as in “I’m colour blind and don’t see racism” OR “I’m not a racist but”, OR ‘I’m not woke to racism, nor institutional racism, so please provide me with a woke lecture on why I should be”.

Rather non-racialism, as the late Neville Alexander would say, is ‘opposition to the racialisation policies of apartheid’, the pseudo-scientific categorisation according to now defunct categories of race, the entire racist endeavour and its opposition that the above dolt is now attempting to negate by pseudo-scientific, obsessive, wokeness. (see note below).

As I write, the death of Adriaan Vlok, apartheid-era Minister of Law and Order has been announced. Lest we forget.

When Anti-Racism manifests in true opposition to Racism, for example, Rwanda’s attempt to remove ethnic distinctions between Hutsis and Tutsis, it may be considered positive Anti-Racism.

Negative Anti-Racism of the woke variety, on the other hand, is essentially another form of Anti-Humanism. Yet another attempt to exclude persons, to otherise and ostracise individuals, on the basis of pseudo-scientific pet theories about race, this in an absurd and tragically flawed effort to forge some form of hip counter-Hegemonic Narrative, one based upon moral brinkmanship, cancel culture and ostracisation.

So let’s get this one sorted for the New Year — racism according to most contemporary definitions is ‘hostility, prejudice or discrimination towards another person on the basis of their membership or association with an ethnic or racial group’. It is also ‘the belief that different races possess distinct characteristics, abilities, or qualities, especially so as to distinguish them as inferior or superior to one another.’

Therein lies the rub.

Racism is certainly not challenging one’s strongly held opinions and beliefs about race, and it is by no means the act of refusing to be racialised or race labelled. I am pretty much done with ‘woke’ youngsters attempting to lecture a struggle veteran, on racism whilst upholding race categories that deprive persons such as myself of a defence against the problem, this at the same time my very real lived experience of apartheid and case against an apartheid media company (see here) is trivialised.

NOTE: Wokeism is a form of virtue-signalling but often going beyond what may be required. When one offensively treats everyone else as if they were asleep, or insists on lecturing from a primer on a subject to experts in the field. Thus amateurish over-compensation. Blind scholasticism without reference to actual evidence and research. Purposeful misreading of history to score short term popular goals. A denial of individualism in favour of a hive-mind or group-think. A platformism strategy, where an individual hogs the mic or assumes the mantle of expert even in the face of real expertise. The person who claims to be awake, is more often than not, the one still asleep.

SEE: Masilo Lepuru: ‘Africa, for the Natives Only.’

by davidrobertlewis - December 28, 2022January 4, 2023

Holocaust denialist Whoopi Goldberg regales us once more, with her platitudes on race

HOLOCAUST DENIALIST Whoopi Goldberg has doubled down on her bizarre assertion that the event which reduced a pre-War population of 11 million Jews living in areas controlled by the Nazis to 5 million, was merely ‘white on white violence’.

After issuing an apology for similar statements made on a talk-show programme earlier this year, the Hollywood actress, re-entered the fray as if she had learn absolutely nothing from the previous experience, necessitating yet another retraction.

Goldberg’s latest remarks are deeply offensive and constitute a form of Antisemitism, in which the speaker attributes race to Jews, in order to, yes, make a point about race.

Another dimension is the manner in which the speaker also denies that race-based policies, such as that which existed under the Nazis, are even racist. In effect, decontextualising the Holocaust as nothing more than ‘white privilege’, and is thus a blatant form of denial.

In a new interview with a British newspaper, The Sunday Times shared during Hanukkah, Goldberg showed little remorse for her past rhetoric, ‘arguing again that the estimated 6 million Jews who were systematically killed in the Holocaust were not targeted based on their race’.

“The View” co-host also claimed that the Nazis targeted people of African descent in addition to Jews because they were physically different, and ‘went as far as to suggest that Jews had an easier time blending in with White people and hiding from the Nazis than Black people did at the time of the Holocaust.’

Goldberg suggested “these are two white groups of people. The minute you turn it into race, it goes down this alley. Let’s talk about it for what it is. It’s how people treat each other.” You can read my earlier comments and response to this statement here.

Whoopi’s comments are not simply illogical and wrong-headed, but could mislead one to conclude that black persons such as herself, cannot experience racism.

Race is the child of racism not the father. The issue here is not whether “Jews are divided on whether they are a race, religion or both” or perceive themselves to be a race (they don’t) but whether the Nazis did.

For the record, the Jews for the most part, form an historical community much like the Kurds, in which ethnicity plays a part, however there are many sub-communities, and thus one may discern Haredi, Sephardi, Ashkenazi and Mizrahi or Oriental Jews.

Local news-outlets such as IOL have failed to cover this story since it exposes and thus jars with the obvious attempt to decontextualise the Holocaust in order to provide a different narrative to the Israel/Palestine conflict, one in which the tragic genocide never occurred.

UPDATE: IOL are now carrying Whoopi’s second apology and retraction.

by davidrobertlewis - December 8, 2022December 11, 2022

Hank’s olde tyme apartheid pub, stuck in the racist past

THE OWNERS of Hank’s Olde Irish Pub, appears stuck in South Africa’s past. The drinking establishment have literally come out with their fists swinging, procuring a well-known criminal attorney William Booth to aggressively pursue all and sundry. “Hank’s Old Irish Pub issued instructions to proceed with a case against Christopher Logan and others for “false” racism complaints and is currently consulting lawyers pertaining to other charges” claims JC MacFarlane LLB who appears to be tweeting on behalf of Booth.

In separate tweets a patron of Hanks warned the public: ‘trannies, race baiters, politicians, pedofiles, eff supporters, anyone who try to push their believes (sic) on others and assholes’ are not welcome, by which we take it they should stay away?

Consider this, a little over 15 years ago, Christopher Logan would have been jailed for swearing. The Irish-owned daily press would be entertaining its readers with an exclusive on how he had ‘assaulted an Irish Pub in Cape Town‘. His accusers would be given ample opportunity and column space to put their case before the public, whist Logan would be denied the most basic of rights such as the right to reply.

The SAHRC would not conduct a probe but simply refer the case to another forum, without providing any clear reasons. There would be a case pending before the Equality Court or Labour Court which would drag its heels for the next fours years, only providing a court date after the threat of protest action. Instead of issuing statements, our partisan government would simply look the other way.

Nobody within the legal fraternity, not least a black attorney nor an advocate of colour would have stepped up or been in a position to provide any assistance, perhaps citing the fact that Logan is ‘white’ or “Jewish” and therefore his case might distract attention away from their own client’s political agendas. It is remarkable that Logan has received any offers of legal assistance.

Before issuing its case-limited apology in 2015 for apartheid, News24 would not have run a story with the following headline: ‘Embarrassed and dehumanised’: Cape Town pub patron refused entry because he is black recounts humiliation (see dirty tricks)

In my case, where I complained about race profiling, de facto race segregation, the censorship of a story involving jazz music, and offensive inquiries into my religious affiliation by the corporation in 2006, I faced no less than an attempted gagging order (see here). I was then wrongfully jailed for complaining to Zulpha Khan at Heart 104.9 and later punished by the justice system for speaking out some four years after the incident occurred. My use of the F-bomb was seen by authorities as simply a license for them to attack my credibility.

Restrained from calling any witnesses in the case in which my secular identity rather than the company’s own racist past, was put on trial, I faced a corrupt and blatantly unfair proceeding in which I was forced to lead evidence from the witness box and the presiding judicial officer later acknowledged the respondent was his client. AJ Cheadle failed to provide any explanation to Cape Law Society regarding information surrounding his business associates and their involvement with the company.

What exactly was Halton Cheadle doing in bed with Max Sisulu whilst his company Kagiso was providing content to Media24 and Multichoice?

The government and the Minister of Justice have fought tooth and nail to suppress the proceedings, which included a test of the status of the TRC Report before the courts. The baldfaced corruption resulted in my opening a docket in terms of the Prevention and Combating of Corrupt Activities Act. The NPA under Zuma failed to act. I therefore can only express my dismay and solidarity with those affected by the latest racist incident and caution readers that our legal system is anything but a support group for the victims of racism.

UPDATE

Hank’s racist clientele have been spewing forth on twitter with a meme, that Christopher Logan is allegedly a “youth leader” who set up the entire incident to get elected, and that 25-year-old Thabiso Danca was merely asked for his ID to ‘verify his age’. Perhaps they have enough funds to pay off a corrupt ANC official like Halton Cheadle, to award them a partisan, 1994-denialist and overtly racist decision? It’s not as if this kind of thing hasn’t happened before?

Far from being politicos, the two are lifeguards. One can’t help notice that Danca looks very mature for his age, hardly a teen trying to get into a bar, and why are black persons being requested to supply ID but its okay for people like Logan to just enter?

He is understandably pissed off at the discrimination. Whether the result amounts to a disruption of the peace is another matter. Hanks seem to be arguing Logan was ‘out of order’ and therefore they were entitled to bounce him, at the same time they claim he was ‘the one who threw the first punch’. This is contradicted by CCTV footage and Logan’s nose-bleed. Don’t you just hate people accusing you of being aggressive when you’re the one with the blood dripping from your nose?

The fact that Logan stood for the SRC as a DASO candidate in 2017 is of no real consequence. One racist tweeter even goes so far as to view his raised fist in the DASO election poster as ‘suspicious’. This notion is reminiscent of apartheid SA, where case history records a well-known incident involving a black man sentenced to assault GBH in the ‘Transkei homeland’ for merely ‘raising his fist’ in what was considered then, a ‘black power salute’.

by davidrobertlewis - November 14, 2022November 27, 2022

Useful idiots, that Fish Hoek ‘Anti-Racist’ saga

IN A VOICE recording taken by a pupil, Asanda Ngoasheng, the principal facilitator of a controversial diversity course held at Fish Hoek High School can be heard saying ‘Black people can be mean, they can be cruel, they can be prejudiced, they can be nasty, but they can never be racist against white people … because racism requires power.’

The contentious idea is apparently part and parcel of a political re-education programme being punted by the Department of Education. All part of a so-called diversity training course, one which facilitator Caiden Lang claims, is predicated on Critical Race Theory (CRT).

Lang writes in The Daily Friend: “To imagine that what happened on Monday at Fish Hoek High was a diversity training session gone wrong is to fundamentally misunderstand what anti-racist education informed by critical race theory is all about. It is to assume that anti-racist education is geared towards social cohesion by teaching people to be less racist, sexist and so on and to help them to coexist.

“This is a mistake.

“Anti-racist education is about being on the right side of history. The discomfort and anger experienced by those kids is an intended first step to becoming ‘anti-racist’. It is a feature, not a bug.”

Unfortunately race typology, the division of society into black and white, and blind obedience to authority, is not what CRT teaches: “CRT is an academic concept that is more than 40 years old,” writes Stephen Sawchuk in Education Week. “The core idea is that race is a social construct, and that racism is not merely the product of individual bias or prejudice, but also something embedded in legal systems and policies.”

Civil Rights history

As Professor Kimberlé Crenshaw, the civil rights activist who coined the term put it: “It is a way of seeing, attending to, accounting for, tracing and analyzing the ways that race is produced, the ways that racial inequality is facilitated, and the ways that our history has created these inequalities that now can be almost effortlessly reproduced unless we attend to the existence of these inequalities.”

Though there appears to be some disagreement on the finer points, where CRT was once a theory firmly situated within the discourse of civil rights and thus secular humanism, as a cross-disciplinary subject it has increasingly turned into nothing more than a radical political platform, a campaign gateway by politicos introducing unverifiable concepts such as dialectical materialism (all history is about power) and political notions such as ‘oppressor and oppressed’.

The result is invariably traumatising for young learners, bringing to mind Soviet-era political re-education camps. An affront on ones psychology, and most certainly a violation of a number of clauses in our constitution, including freedom of thought, belief and opinion, academic freedom, right to receive and impart information (in this case, you may receive the Department’s dogma, but don’t talk back or impart), the right to psychological integrity (the Dept seeks to impose discursive sanctions whilst assaulting learner’s mental functioning).

Criticism

Critics of CRT state that the theory leads to ‘negative dynamics such as a focus on group identity over universal, shared traits; divides people into “oppressed” and “oppressor” groups; and urges intolerance’.

CRT in its current form, as rolled out by the Dept commissars, presents caricature and stereotype instead of facts and information, and appears more applicable to the context of black persons living as an oppressed minority in the USA where “white Americans are the racial and ethnic majority, with non-Hispanic whites representing 57.8% of the population”.

Peter Wood in Where Did We Get the Idea That Only White People Can Be Racist? published by the National Association of Scholars writes “The idea that “black people can’t be racist” is just a meme, not a coherent argument.”

Michelle I. Gao in “Who Can’t be Racist” responds: “This argument’s main point — that minorities can’t be racist because they have no power to act on such antagonism — is also reductive. We shouldn’t have to take stock of each other’s race and relative power in society before making a judgment on an act itself. We shouldn’t have to condone prejudice or discrimination against anyone, for any reason.”

In South Africa where persons who define as black are in the majority and have been part of a black majority government for nearly 30 years, there is an immediate rebuttal. The assertion that ‘black people can’t be racist, ‘because racism requires power’ and ‘blacks have no power’ is only even vaguely reasonable if one believes personal power to always be bound up with economic power, instead of the vote.

It is a tired narrative that our country has one of the highest Gini coefficients in the world, the measure of the gap between rich and poor, and that wealth often correlates with our demographics, which says nothing about the Human Development Index (HDI) where SA ranks relatively well.

Here the debate is rather between the haves and have-nots. Providing learners with intellectual tools, rather than prescriptions and injunctions and avoiding a party-line if you will.

Racialising the issue and dispensing with ‘non-racialism’, presents a unique set of problems since not every person informally categorised as black is ‘poor and underprivileged’. There is no universal truth in stating ‘black persons are always poor, have no economic power and therefore they can never be racists’. Saying this, merely gives credence to another ridiculous proposition, ‘black people can’t be litterbugs’.

In the same way as maintaining apartheid’s many Askaris and turncoats, were not traitors so much as heroes, even though they murdered on behalf of the regime?

Philosophical Considerations

Consider the first statement’s corollary, ‘if black people can’t be racists, then whites can never experience racism’.

And Afrikaners can’t be oppressed by the British.

And Jews can never experience Anti-Semitism.

Or ‘white folk’ can never be poor, because, well being poor depends upon … power?

In this jaundiced, reductionist view, those white activists detained, tortured and even murdered by the apartheid regime, were not experiencing racism per se, but merely the brutal instrumentality of the regime. As an activist classified by the apartheid regime as ‘blanke‘, I cannot be spat at, slapped and smeared by right-wing extremists.

The descent from humanism along with its universal truths, the Freedom Charter and its exemplar, our non-racialist Constitution, towards the narrow political objectives and moral absolutism of anti-racism’s pundits, articulated by a radicalised Education platform, is a slippery slope one which invariably ends with denial of the self-same history its zealous advocates profess to teach.

In this jaded current state-of-mind, there were no white people in the civil rights movement as such, nor even the anti-apartheid movement for that matter.

And if there were, such persons like myself, were merely allies at best, or worse, useful idiots.

SEE: Palesa Morudu dismisses ‘diversity grifters’ at the same time she downplays the incident as a mere ‘reading of a poem to a captive audience of 800 pupils‘

SEE: FF Plus lays complaint with SAHRC about Fish Hoek ‘diversity’ session

by davidrobertlewis - September 20, 2022November 28, 2022

Masilo Lepuru: ‘Africa, for the Natives Only.’

“We posit that the non-racialism of transformation of Sisulu and the non-racialism of decolonisation of Sobukwe and Biko are inadequate. Africans must stop to accommodate whites and opt for the uncompromising Africanism of Lembede in the form of Africa for the Africans and Europe for the Europeans” concludes an opinion piece by Masilo Lepuru, a junior researcher at the Institute for Pan African Thought and Conversation( IPATC).

The Institute housed at the University of Johannesburg (UJ) claims to “provide a forum for scholars, practitioners, and civil society actors across Africa and its Diaspora to dialogue and contribute to the rigorous production and dissemination of Pan-African knowledge and culture” and further seeks to ‘promote original and innovative Pan-African ideas and critical dialogue in pursuit of global excellence in research and teaching, and to contribute actively to building an international profile for UJ on Pan-African issues.’

Lepura’s piece entitled “Non-racialism and its Discontent’s” published by IOL, thus purports to answer a question seemingly of utmost contemporaneous import — namely ‘the resolution of the national question’. Instead of providing any reasonable answers, he proceeds to fabricate a self-serving and overtly racist discourse. In other words, a false narrative in which the views of one Marcus Garvey, are hijacked and transposed with that of ANC Youth League founder and first president Anton Lembede.

It was the Jamaican Garvey, who whilst writing during the 1930s, first proposed “Africa for the Africans… at home and abroad.” A statement later memorialised in his poem of the same title which makes it clear he meant the term in a nationalistic sense, as in “America for the Americans”. Lepura writing almost 100 years later from the halls of UJ, sows a rather different, racist history of Pan Africanism within the country — a cockamamy yarn, obviously planted to subvert the very idea of non-racialism. An idea which has been at the bedrock of the ANC, in thought if not action, for decades. It is presented here as nothing less than a call for ‘Africa, for the Natives Only.’

At first he claims: “There are two dominant views regarding the resolution of the national question in South Africa. The first one posits that the national question revolves around the question of land and race, while the second one states that the problem of the national question is one of class in the form of the haves and have-nots.” Before proceeding apace, unapologetically towards an unpatriotic and clearly racist position.

His argument and proceeding bile, is best summarised as ‘the majority remain poor, therefore non-racialism has failed. Racism is the obvious answer.’

Tom Lodge writing in Black politics in South Africa since 1945, Longman (1983) describes the Pan Africanist movement’s rejection of “God’s Apartheid” by the inaugural Pan Africanist Congress held in Orlando, 1959.

“Four months after their secession the Africanists held the inaugural conference of the new organisation, the Pan-Africanist Congress, in Orlando. In a highly charged atmosphere, the conference was opened by the chairman of the Federation of Independent African Churches, the Reverend W. M. Dimba, who began his address by denouncing those ‘hooligans of Europe who killed our God’, and went on to salute ‘a black man, Simon of Arabia who carried Jesus from the cross’.”

“The delegates then elected a president, rejecting, rather to the surprise of observers, Josias Madzunya (who had disgraced himself by calling for ‘God’s Apartheid’, that is, Africa for the Africans and Europe for the Europeans), choosing instead Robert Sobukwe, a lecturer in African languages at the University of the Witwatersrand.”

The academic effort expended at framing a non-debate, one which clearly exists only inside the inner sanctum of the IPATC alone, is accomplished by Lepuru without so much as any demonstration of popular support. He immediately assumes his own authorship like a Monarch over the character of our country, and thus a contrived argument, which may have once informed the period immediately preceding the constitutional process. Current debates are thus subsumed by the introduction of hackneyed quibbles from a former era.

All cast here in the pursuance of a shallow academic and political project, calculated to re-engineer the country’s local ‘African Nationalism’ within the ambit of a particularly vicious trend amongst dissatisfied Pan-Africanists, namely their quest to create a continental super-state, one with overtly racist overtones.

It would not be all that bad if Lepuru were accurately relaying historical information as fact. If all he was doing was providing us with an opinion, as some do — one which myopically opposes the non-racial framework of the nation’s Constitution, whose Preamble states: “South Africa belongs to all who live in it, united in our diversity”. And thus critically tackling a foundation document, which attempts to negate racism by its clarion call to non-racialism. Instead what we have here is far, far worse.

Lodge goes on to record that in contrast, the ANCYL Anton Lembede believed in a racially assertive nationalism which would serve national self-determination: ‘Africa is a Black man’s country’ he stated, and thus ‘political collaboration with other groups could take place only with Africans acting as an organised self-conscious unit’. This early strain of ‘black consciousness’ is a far cry from the misreading of ‘Africa for Africans‘ of Marcus Garvey. It begs the question what any new sign reserving the future land might state: Africans here. Non-Africans there?

NOTE: Our constitution has several references to race. (Equality 9.3) The state may not unfairly discriminate directly or indirectly against anyone on one or more grounds, including race. Bars advocacy of hatred that is based on race in (16.2 c Freedom of Expression) ,bars discriminate on the basis of race in (Education 29.2c), provides person or community dispossessed of property restitution of that property or to equitable redress. Empowers state to introduce measures to redress the results of past racial discrimination (Property 25.6 25.7).

SEE: Lord Musi, quit calling yourself a judge

by davidrobertlewis - May 31, 2018

Tag: Racism