‘I was the victim’
‘MONKEY’: GOLA SINGLED OUT
The patron made ‘snide comments’ and displayed other ‘passive aggressive’ behaviour.
Comedian and TV personality Lazola Gola took to Facebook to describe a racial incident that occurred on Wednesday at a trendy Cape Town bar and bistro, The Power & The Glory.
Gola says he was called a monkey by one of the patrons.
Speaking to The Citizen, he said the slur was uttered by a man who had been harassing him and a friend. The man was eventually escorted outside, at which point he uttered the slur. He adds that the bouncers of the bar were far more concerned with his anger caused by the offensive words than the words themselves.
“I was having some drinks with my mate, who is white, and catching up,” says Gola. “I went to the bar to get a drink, when I returned there was a guy sitting in my seat.
“I told him [to leave], and he reacted by literally dragging a seat from somewhere else and shoving it in front of me.”
After that, the man “eventually got up and went to sit in the seat he dragged”.
Gola says a little while later, the man came again to sit at his and friend’s table uninvited.
According to Gola, the man turned to his white friend and asked “is this the BEE table?”
He apparently kept coming back to the table, coming close to Gola’s face and making him and his friend uncomfortable, making “weird, snide comments” and displaying other forms of “passive aggressive” behaviour.
The patron’s bad behaviour led to him being escorted out of the bar, at which point he called Gola a “monkey”. This angered him, which led to the bouncers holding him back and manhandling him.
The man was now sitting at the outside section of the bar on the street. According to Gola, the man “sat behind us drinking and pointing and laughing at me” while the bouncers were accosting him.
Gola was eventually told to leave, and was initially not let back in to get his laptop and drinks. The comedian feels this is an incident that saw the victim being handled more harshly than the perpetrator.
“I tried to explain that the easiest way to calm me down is to not let racists here say that kind of thing,” he said.
“I was the victim. I feel staff need to be sensitive to these situations, you’ve had 24 years to train for this kind of thing.”
He adds that other patrons were passive throughout the incident, with some telling him he was overreacting, although there was a show of solidarity from one white lady who approached him after the incident was over.
The bar’s manager, Sabine Gelle, agreed with Gola that the issue was mishandled by the bouncers and said they would do everything to deal with the incident.
Gelle, who was not present when all this happened, said she “woke up this morning [yesterday] only to find all the comments on Facebook”. “Our security staff mishandled everything.”
She said that they would apologise to Gola and make sure the man who uttered the slur would be banned for life.
Gelle said the security would undergo internal processes to ensure an incident like this did not happen again.