SOUTH AFRICA’S SOCIAL MEDIA FUROR
JOHANNESBURG— Her name is Penny Sparrow and, over the course of two days, she went from being an anonymous South African real estate agent to perhaps the country’s most hated woman.
Sparrow ignited a social media storm when she posted a Facebook rant comparing black people to monkeys. The uproar has shone a spotlight into a deep racial divide more than two decades after South Africa scuttled the apartheid system that institutionalized racism.
And when Sparrow took to Facebook to apologize and local media to explain, she only made things worse.
Sparrow’s initial post last Saturday insulted black people enjoying New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day on the beaches in Durban, in South Africa’s east coast province, Kwa-Zulu Natal. Beaches were strictly segregated under apartheid.
“To allow them loose is inviting huge dirt and discomfort and troubles to others,” she wrote of black people.
Complaining about rubbish left on the beach, she wrote that she would “address the blacks of South Africa as monkeys as I see cute little wild monkeys do the same (sic) pick drop and litter.”
Sparrow posted an apology on Facebook saying the comments were “not meant to be a personal thing.” Her defence of the remarks Monday in an interview with a South African news site, News 24, only made things worse. Sparrow appeared sorrier to be at the centre of a viral media storm than about the offence her comments caused. She also repeated the monkey comparison.
“I am sorry that it has taken such a viral turn, but it was just a statement of how it was,” she said. “I made the mistake of comparing them with monkeys. Monkeys are cute and they’re naughty . . . I wasn’t being nasty or rude or horrible, but it’s just that they make a mess. It is just how they are.”
More than two decades after the end of apartheid, racist abuse on social media and online is so commonplace that several media outlets last year shut down the comments sections under news articles. (The Star has also ceased online commenting.)
A survey last month by the Institute for Justice and Reconciliation found that 61.4 per cent of South Africans felt that race relations since the end of white minority rule in 1994 had either remained the same or deteriorated. More than 60 per cent said they experienced racism in their daily lives and more than 67 per cent said they had little or no trust in people of other racial groups. Thirteen per cent of black South Africans surveyed said they experienced racism all or most of the time.
According to the survey, most interaction between people of different racial groups occurs in public spaces such as workplaces, educational institutions, shopping malls and similar spaces.
“Interaction in more intimate spaces, such as private homes and social or communal gatherings, is limited,” the institute found.
Sparrow was a member of the country’s main opposition party, the Democratic Alliance (DA), which reacted strongly to her comments. The party condemned the remarks, announced it would suspend her and formally sought criminal charges against her for crimen injuria, the crime of hurting someone’s dignity through racist or obscene language. Police opened a criminal investigation.
“Racists are not welcome in the DA, and have no place in our democratic South African society,” the party said in a statement.