My Measured Response

I was boiling over with anger when I read this piece on Tuesday 9 June. I needed space and time to reflect.

You will note I have given the same response to your other story.

First, I would not regard either of these stories as Satire. I don’t know if your intention was to create Juvenalian satire through mockery and sarcasm but it fell flat.

I find nothing funny in using Blacks as the butt of your jokes.

I can understand the story premise of posing as the bigoted cop or the mother who sends her children to private school, a reflection of mindsets extant in society yet you do not rebut the opinions expressed by these fictional characters or provide your own commentary.

Repeating attitudes expounded by racists demonstrates a lack of sensitivity towards those who are being choked, not only in the US but around the world.

Tuesday 9 June heralded the day on which George Floyd was laid to rest in Houston. South Africans had already joined in the global #BlackLivesMatter protests, with particular reference to Collins Khosa who was brutally beaten on Good Friday by soldiers and died later that night. He did not get global attention because all video footage was destroyed or deleted by security forces.

I wrote and published a story about that. I didn’t satirise it.

Our Defence Force had exonerated the soldiers of any wrongdoing and it was only the moral hypocrisy of our President, wanting to stand in solidarity with African Americans after a total silence about the incident for over two months, that forced him to publicly announce that he will see to it that the perpetrators are brought to book. (Twelve others have died as a result of police brutality during lockdown.)

Against this backdrop, on this momentous day, Black ex-pupils of private schools in South Africa revealed their experience of racism in these predominantly White schools where they received their education. I listened to a radio interview with many of them that morning and read an article on the topic later that same day, before tuning in to George Floyd’s memorial and could not believe that racism was alive and well in schools 26 years into democracy.

Hearing their stories as well as receiving a notification yesterday that my old school is meeting to discuss this very issue left me heart sore. Understandable that I find your story about private schools offensive.

I have a story in the pipeline on this. There’ll be nothing to laugh at.

And your cop character — mocking the poor, stating that the majority of people who get caught smoking weed are POC, denigrating them for not having their own backyard, and then telling people they’re not finding a job because “you’re fucking lazy, arsehole.”

The cop’s stance that smoking weed causes crime is farcical — it’s poverty and social injustice that creates the breeding ground for crime to thrive.

But once again, you don’t supply your own commentary or opinion.

How about we change the characters in your stories?

The mother is a White nationalist who hates Jews but justifies she is not an anti-semite because she sends her kids to a private school that allows a quota of Jewish kids to attend.

The cop is actually a Gestapo officer who discusses arrests of people who are breaking the law by not being of the Aryan race — homosexuals, gypsies, communists and other undesirables. But he points out that the majority of those arrested are Jews.

How does that feel?