Malema’s racist rant a final straw

JULIUS Malema’s most recent racist rant, during the EFF’s 4th anniversary at Curries Fountain Stadium, cannot go unchallenged.

Accusing Indians of racism and perpetrators of exploitation of black African workers is a loose statement that portrays all South Africans of Indian origin in a bad light. Undoubtedly there are exploitative and corrupt employers but confining that to a race group is an extremely myopic view.

As a patriotic South African, I do not appreciate a race or colour tag but people like Malema and some politicians thrive on racial and ethnic divisions in their political grandstanding. This talk about social cohesion and Ubuntu is nothing but window dressing, when apartheid era quotas are still applied and South Africans of Indian origin are marginalised. Many South African Indians laid down their lives in destroying the apartheid government but it seems all forgotten now.

Had the new democratic dispensation really recognised that all non-whites were disadvantaged to some extent, we would not need organisations such as South African Minority Rights Equality Movement (SAMREM) to fight against discrimination.

Unlike Malema who attacks a race, SAMREM fights the real cause of race discrimination and the perpetrators thereof. RIKESH ISHWARLALL

Pietermaritzburg