Balmy holiday followed by a torrid homecoming
The weather report for the Danakil Depression in Ethiopia, one of the hottest places on Earth, predicts a temperature of 42°C today. It is likely to be even hotter in the Catzavelos household as the family deal with the fallout from Adam Catzavelos’s racist social media post. The reaction to it has gathered in its wake members of Catzavelos’s family and the people who work for the family business. Catzavelos — enjoying the kind of holiday few of his fellow South Africans would be able to afford — sent a “weather report” from a sunny white beach in Greece, which, he celebrated, was free of black people (except he used the K-word).
The post went viral and he was quickly identified by Twitter users. His family promptly fired him from the family business, St George’s Fine Foods, and — his brother Nic told the Sunday Times — took his company shares away and put them into a trust for staff. His parents are in a place of safety after death threats. Clients deserted St George’s, prompting staff to beg them not to leave them jobless. Catzavelos was banned from his children’s school. The EFF laid charges of crimen injuria against him. Catzavelos apologised, saying he felt total shame and would spend the rest of his life repenting.
His apology acknowledged that his “thoughtless” and “insensitive” comments showed a complete lack of understanding for what “people in our nation have endured”. It is difficult to reconcile this with the supremacist tone of his post. It was a deliberately hateful comment that carried a powerful attitude of arrogance and racial superiority. If it was thoughtless, it was in the sense of exposing his brutish lack of self-awareness, lack of empathy and lack of gratitude for the privilege built through opportunities bolstered by his race. The hurdle his apology needs to overcome is to acknowledge the racial sickness in his heart — and to recognise we are all human beings, in this together.
As we move (slowly and fitfully) towards a nonracial, democratic, just and peaceful SA, we can expect more storms of racism. But the fallout from Catzavelos’s toxic tornado should serve as a heavy-weather warning to the racists in our midst: mend your ways — or face the consequences.