Racism has been and will probably continue to be a contentious issue in South Africa for a long time. Looking back at 2016 – if one were to evaluate South Africa on news reports only – it is not hard to reach the conclusion that racism in South Africa is a problem of white people being overwhelmingly racist toward black people, while black people are usually the innocent victims of racism.
Off the top of my head I can easily count up to ten white racists who have reached the headlines of South African media, but I can hardly think of any black racists who have reached the same level of condemnation.
About a week ago, there were two especially noteworthy stories on the topic of racism that hit the news, incidentally more or less on the same day. On the one hand, AfriForum was filing criminal charges against 12 people who have openly encouraged the slaughter of white people on social media. On the other hand, a white man gave a black woman a lift in the only space he had available: the back of his bakkie. The problem was that there was a big cage on the back and the woman agreed to hitch a ride inside the cage.
Certainly, the latter example leaves a bitter taste in the mouth and a reasonable person should be angry at first sight of the picture of a black woman in a cage on the back of a bakkie. Taking all the information into consideration a reasonable person would also conclude that publicly calling for the slaughter and rape of people based on the colour of their skin is exponentially worse than the so-called #BakkieCage story. But then again, an informed South African can also accurately guess which one of these stories made the headlines…
Even after the story behind the #BakkieCage “incident” became known (how the woman got into the cage of her own free will) Adriaan Basson, News24’s Editor-in-chief, continued to write about it, slamming the white man for giving the black woman a lift in a cage. Basson went even further, reminding us about what he describes as 300 years of oppression of black people by white people in South Africa.
Clichéd as it may sound, I couldn’t help thinking about George Orwell’s famous line: “All animals are equal, but some are more equal than others.”