Take racists to task

IT’S Gabi Le Roux, the guy probably best known for co-composing and producing Mandoza’s boundarybreaking Nkalakatha.

But… I’m not here to promote us or our work, it’s about our Mzansi Nation and social cohesion. This is about hate speech and racism amongst our leaders.

Recently DA stalwart Penny Sparrow’s despicably racist Facebook statement about “… monkeys etc.” was rightfully exposed to the media and she was subsequently brought to book in many respects. There… justice done and hopefully an example to all of us, especially our leaders. Right?

Unfortunately, it does not seem that way yet and this continues to blemish every effort among truly caring, positive, hard-working, patriotic and socially cohesive South Africans to create a better, more harmonious, more prosperous Society in Mzansi.

Last week, on my good friend Don Laka’s Facebook page, another such a divisive statement from one of our leaders, this time by ANC Councillor (Soweto Ward 49) Mr Mandla Mlangeni, pronouncing very clearly “White people are Satans”.

The context is important, an historic picture posted by Don Laka of Belgian Colonialists in the Congo circa 1908, evidently in the process of hanging a small African boy.

That kind of behaviour can rightfully be called evil, as can Nazi extermination of Jews, the Rwandan Genocide, apartheid regime’s Eugene de Kock and Dirk Coetzee’s horrific antics, etc. But… Are all Germans now Nazi SS perpetrators? Are all Hutus now slaughterers of Tutsis? Are all white-skinned South Africans “Satans”?

Do we just keep ignoring these rants? Surely not, when they are coming from people charged with building a nation? Surely we can only expect a consistently even-handed (responsible) reaction from the media, such as SABC, Cape Talk, 702, KFM, Cape Times, Argus, Sowetan and others to take leadership figures like Councillor Mlangeni, Ms Sparrow and others to task for turning South Africans against each other on the basis of their skin pigmentation?