Once in a while we receive complaints from members of the coloured community in Grahamstown who believe they have suffered from racial discrimination. There is no flood of complaining letters, and sometimes weeks go by without hearing of such incidents – but they don’t go away.
Once in a while we receive complaints from members of the coloured community in Grahamstown who believe they have suffered from racial discrimination. There is no flood of complaining letters, and sometimes weeks go by without hearing of such incidents – but they don’t go away.
All too often, the complainants blame specific departments within the municipality – but this week, we received a letter about perceived racial intolerance at the hands of the police.
Many times we have heard questions (rhetorical?) about why some houses damaged by the 2008 tornado have been repaired by the municipality, but others have not. The question is phrased so as to provoke journalists to find out the answer to such a question and, in so doing, discover yet more evidence of racism.
Supposedly, we will find that the municipality has fixed houses belonging to black township residents and ignored the plight of coloured residents. This has not happened, because we have simply not found any concrete evidence to support these allegations.
Grocott’s Mail has not escaped such accusations. We have received comments from individuals, who say that this newspaper does not adequately cover issues in their community – a thinly disguised allegation of racial discrimination. We have often heard laments along the lines of “we weren’t light enough during apartheid, and now we are not dark enough for democracy”.
In response to such allegations, we sometimes hear comments about people being “over-sensitive”. This generic brush-off can be ill-considered because we, as South Africans, still have loads of apartheid baggage that should prevent us from disregarding the slightest hint of racist acrimony.
All allegations of racism should be taken seriously. This applies equally at local government level as it does national level, which is why the ANC’s support of a racist spokesperson is so horrendously shocking.
The ANC’s transformation from an organisation built on principles of non-discrimination to one that happily appoints, and retains, an outspoken racist as its spokesperson, is deeply disturbing.
