Crowd-funding for ‘racist’
Internet flurry after two campaigns launched to pay Penny Sparrow’s fine
SOCIAL MEDIA was in a flurry yesterday as two separate crowd-funding campaigns were set up to help Penny Sparrow pay her equality court fine.
The retired estate agent was fined R150000 for likening black beach goers to monkeys in a Facebook post.
But, Sparrow may not have to pay a cent should the crowd-funding campaigns prove successful. The Umzinto Equality Court ruled Sparrow must pay R150 000 to the Oliver and Adelaide Tambo Foundation for her racist comments.
Two separate crowd-funding initiatives were launched on You Caring, a crowd-funding website.
One was started by Natalie Moolman called “Lets Help Penny Sparrow” pay her fine, and the other by Helgard Muller called “Help Penny Sparrow”.
Muller set his target for the fundraiser at $10 000 (R152 311.95) and Moolman set her target at $9 200 (R140 126.99).
Moolman said she started the initative to help Sparrow escape prison for the comments she made.
“Truth be told, a fair amount of South Africans are racists, but they just keep it to themselves, they don’t post it on social media platforms, like Penny did.
“South Africa only got democracy in 1994, it has been a mere 22 years. So the scars caused by apartheid to both blacks and whites are fairly fresh. America got its democracy more than 50 years ago, but racism there is still a rife.”
She said what Sparrow did can never be justified, but said by issuing her with a fine is teaching the public to never “write such things on social media platforms”.
“You never put up race, sex and religious comments on these platforms for that matter. Those topics can offend people, can also create hate among the human race.”
She said she felt Sparrow needed a second chance and people should donate, especially because Sparrow apologised for her remarks. By late yesterday afternoon, none of the crowd-funding initiatives had raised any money and were a long way from reaching their targets.
The initiatives were met with disapproval by social media users, with one user, Kate Woodstone creating a petition to try to stop the funding. The petition, “Stop white people from starting a Go Fund ME Page for Penny Sparrow”, aimed to get 100 online signatures, and by late yesterday afternoon had 23.