God save us from these racists!

It is unbelievable that there are those that still view us blacks as kaffirs 14 years since the collapse of the apartheid regime; after what we thought was freedom. So optimistic about our non-racial future were we that Fikile-Ntsikelelo Moya even wrote a piece in the Mail & Guardian saying he wished for his child to grow up in a South Africa oblivious to race.

Of course I agreed with Moya and even started thinking that would be achievable in the not-so-distant future. Not any more. I am not saying a South Africa oblivious to race is impossible, but I think it won’t happen any time soon. The scores of racist occurrences that take place in our country on a daily basis make even the weirdest of optimists think twice about our non-racial future.

Racism, from either blacks or whites, needs to be condemned with all the contempt it deserves. I say this with the appreciation that not only whites are racist; blacks too are culprits of racist thinking and behaviour towards their white counterparts.

However, whites have excelled in recent weeks. At a University of Johannesburg campus a first-year black student was reportedly made to wash dishes for white students and later made to shower in cold water for four hours. These white students felt that they needed to ensure that the black student was properly cleaned before he could share a residence with them, in case he had worms, as some whites had been taught that blacks were savages who had worms.

The events at the University of Johannesburg are intriguing, if not disgusting. Interestingly, it is not the first time an act of racism has occurred at this university and it certainly won’t be the last, until something is done to bring this to a halt. Seemingly the Constitution of South Africa finds no application at the University of Johannesburg’s Kingsway campus, especially the part on human rights.

What makes racist acts more disgusting is the fact that our Constitution outlaws them, but they persist nevertheless. How stupid were we to think that a piece of paper such as the Constitution would change an embedded culture among some white people that blacks were half-human savages that had worms? This racist culture is often passed from father to son, from mother to daughter!

Talking about pieces of paper, it was once reported that in the Eastern Cape a taxi driver, when asked by a traffic officer to produce his driver’s licence, responded by saying that it was he, not some piece of paper, that drove the taxi. Maybe we need to fix it firmly in our minds that it is us who have to change racism in South Africa, and not some piece of paper called the Constitution.

Without underplaying the importance of having a progressive Constitution, as we do, as long as we sit back and enjoy the little comfort that we have, the hatred and resentment that is fostered on young students by some racist elements within universities will one day erupt into an unstoppable confrontation by its direct victims.

Universities are seemingly playing a crucial role in maintaining racist tendencies. The University of Johannesburg, the University of the Free State, the University of Pretoria and the University of Stellenbosch are the most prominent in the list of Afrikaner laagers!

Proper-minded South Africans have always sought a South Africa where a person’s skin was of no significance, nor was the colour of his or her eyes, as Bob Marley once sang. However, there remain rogue elements that refuse to transform, defying all odds — the Constitution included.

Adding salt to injury is the fact that scores of black and white comrades died in the struggle against apartheid. However, there are still institutions like the University of Free State that have racially segregated residences, where there are still places where black students cannot walk on campus for fear of victimisation.

Surely, thousands of South Africans did not die for this. I, for one, will not stand idle and allow street justice to prevail, in our universities. I am about to register at the UJ. I hope to see this racism on my own and, if possible, experience it first-hand.

I am not half-human and I am not a savage; I do not have worms. So, all of those white people who see us black South Africans as savages but keep quiet about it must know that one day they will say what they are thinking, and all hell will break loose!