Apartheid morality, one for Afrikaners and one for the rest

Thank goodness for people like Rhoda Kadalie. As an Afrikaner I was outraged by the abusive Reitz video made at the Free State University. So was many other Afrikaners and Afrikaner organisations.

But simmering all week was a nagging feeling that the way this has been criticised from certain quarters is so disproportionate when compared to other incidents. This hypocrisy in itself reeked to me of prejudice. Some commentators like Michael Trapido have spotted the same.

The reaction of celebrity South African society and the international media is unquestionably disproportionate when compared to other incidents in this country, and now it seems some organisations like Cosatu and the ANC are trying to make political capital from it.

I don't for a moment think lambasting these students for arrogant racist abuse and taking strong disciplinary action against them is unwarranted. Neither don't I think the University management at the UFS should take stock of how they deal with racism and change its structures if it must. But can we have similar for all abuse suffered by different groups in this country, on campuses and off it?

And, yesterday Rhoda Kadalie said exactly that in a hard hitting article Video uproar betrays culture of double standards.

Take violence against women at our Universities says Kadalie.

"...we forget that sexual violence and rape are prevalent and covered up on so many campuses. Ask me, I know about sexual violations at so-called progressive universities, where student leaders were involved in the sexual harassment and rape of fellow students. These campuses were not billed as “campuses of rape”, and whole campuses are not painted with the same brush because of those who routinely perpetrate such acts of violence against female students at only one."

What is Rhoda referring to? To these reports of rape at a Durban campus? Perhaps, who knows, because besides this report very little else was written about this particular incident or any others. It certainly did not reach the Sowetan, The Star, Die Beeld, The Sunday Times etc.

Perhaps because it has a female editor The Mail and Guardian gave a UKZN lecturer Lubna Nadvi the opportunity to write a further article on the rapes at the UKZN campus.

For her trouble the newspaper got a stinging rebuke from the university management including the deputy dean, Professor Nceba Gqaleni accusing Nadvi of racism. Incredibly the report was attacked because there had been none before on other similar incidents:

“A number of African students have died or been mugged in residences.”

And there had been no media coverage he said.

Ferial Haffajee, the Mail and Guardian editor sprang to Lubna Nadvi's defence:

“A number of African students have died or been mugged in residences.” The writers throw in this statement as evidence of Nadvi’s alleged ­racism and charge that she only cared when an American student was raped, not because it is deeply shocking that places of learning have become places of horror.

Shocking yes, but still the story barely registered at home or abroad.

But shocking events ignored is par for he course it seems. Kadalie goes on and lists racism and abuse by black South Africans that go unreported or that spectacularly fails to rack up the column inches:

Equally, at many predominantly black universities, racial segregation at residences is the order of the day, but nobody speaks about that because it is assumed here that freedom of association is a right . Do you remember the coloured man who moved into Khayelitsha and was hounded out by blacks for daring to go and live in a black area?

You probably don't remember it, but there was a report of the coloured man's whose house was stoned by a crowd of 400 people.

But this of course is small fry compared to the xenophobia foreign blacks encounter in this country and often pay for with their lives. Kadalie again:

And how many hundreds of Somalis in Western Cape have been killed by other black people for simply being successful business people? Where are the headlines about this? Where is the Human Rights Commission when it comes to taking up these plights?

Here is one account of the suffering of Somalis at the hands of Xhosa's in Masiphumelele Visoek.

Kadalie is however wrong. The killings of Somalis is a country wide phenomena and not limited to the Cape. Attacks on Somalis have been recorded in Knysna, Stellenbosch in the Western Cape, Uitenhage in the Eastern Cape, Diepsloot in Gauteng and Khutsong in the Free State, among others.

The first death was in 1997. Jacob van Garderen the new director of Lawyers for Human Rights have been dealing with cases of Somalis killed in Parys in the Free Sate as well. There have been no news reports of these killings in Parys whatsoever.

In October 2006 as many as 40 Somalis were killed in one month, and all we have to show for it is this article by Pearly Joubert. Where is the international media?

I could list more instances of abuse where the international media peculiarly let South Africa off the hook. Compare this to what happens elsewhere. Russia is regularly in the news when racist attacks take place where individuals are hurt or killed. In another article the BBC follows up on a Amnesty International report that as many as 28 people could have been killed in Russian racist attacks during 2005.

When a polish immigrant Robert Dziekanski, recently was tazered to death by police in Canada the world was aghast.

When Adonis Musati, a young Zimbabwean asylum seeker died of hunger, a few meters away from the department of home affairs on the glitzy Cape Town foreshore, after he had queued there for days, there was barely a whimper. It did not register internationally.

Very recently The Sunday Times commissioned research from Plus 94 Research on racism in this country. Futhi Ntshingila reported on the front page of the Sunday Times that most black South Africans experience other black South Africans as most racist.

The poll found that Indians were the most likely recipients of racial hostility from Africans, with three out of four Indian respondents claiming first-hand experience of this.

The sentiment was most obvious in Durban and academic and activist Ashwin Desai said this was not surprising. “You tend to compare yourself with somebody across the road from you. Therefore the conflict between Africans and Indians happens ironically in places where they live next to each other,” he said.

A scintillating story and controversial to boot, but well researched and including some excellent commentary and analysis from the likes of Professor Adam Habib, Dan Ncayiyana, activist Ashwin Desai and Professor Charles Villa-Vicencio.

I challenge you to try and saddle up Google and find the original story on the Sunday Times website or any follow ups by any other media organisation. The only reference to the original story is to be found on a sad right wing website, where it has been copied and pasted wholesale.

Why do we suffer from this two faced reporting? Why this hypocritical public gushing and regurgitating on the one hand and conspiracy of silence on the other? The world and we have our South African narrative fixed and we won't let facts get in the way of our emotional reaction.

For lack of a better word I will call it apartheid reporting, because that is exactly what it is. There are two sets or moral codes operating in South Africa.

The consequences of these lopsided reactions is to encourage Afrikaner denialists of racism. Because agreeing is seen as giving carte blance for the rising new wave of prejudice, sweeping all in 'transformative' path.

Should we condemn Reitz less? No. But lets take up the cudgels elsewhere where people are abused and killed. This is after all about human rights and not persecution, right?

Sphere: Related Content