Imagine you are accused of being a racist. You are a public figure and the racism accusation takes off like an uncontrolled wildfire across all media - social, print, web and broadcast. The accusation becomes fact in the public mind before you can down your morning coffee. Wherever you go, you feel like the word “racist” is branded onto your body with a capital “R” like they do with cattle on farms. Your personal and family life is ruined, and it seems your professional life is about to go under as well.
Your name is Mark Boucher, the national cricket coach, and the charges are brought by one of the most administratively inept organisations in the history of sport, Cricket SA (CSA). More than a year later, CSA announces that “there is no basis to sustain any of the disciplinary charges, including charges of racism” and that the board has “formally and unreservedly withdrawn all of the charges”. The main reason for the withdrawal seems to be that cricket player Paul Adams decided not to testify against his former teammate whom he accused, with others, of singing derogatory racist songs about coloured cricketers like himself in the dressing room during their playing days. Regardless, the damage is done.
We need to add some nuance and complexity to the two events in response to those who gleefully make the claim that ‘there was no racism’.
Now imagine you are a public school. Somebody charges the school with organising a whites-only matric ball in 2020 and, with images posted all over social media, a feeding frenzy results. The school is racist, shouted black pupils on the inside and political activists on the outside. Ever the opportunist, the EFF marches on Brackenfell High School a few times, creating a tinderbox of racial tension at the gates. The courts prevent the school from interdicting the EFF from protesting near the school. “Fists fly,” read the title of a disturbing YouTube video as black protesters and white parents climbed over each other.
In March this year the SA Human Rights Commission cleared the school of racist wrongdoing. It turns out this was a private matric function organised by a few parents and attended by only 42 of the 254 matriculants. Given the times, the school had cancelled its own matric ball because of Covid-19. Hence the finding of the SAHRC: “The evidence exonerates the school from the planning, funding, advertising or hosting of the event” and the school “did not directly or indirectly discriminate against grade 12 pupils on the grounds of race”. Too late. The damage was done and the school will forever carry the “R” brand in the minds of much of the public.
There are several disturbing things about these two incidents. One, the disproportionate coverage of the racist charges over days, even weeks and months, and the factual, end-of-story report of “no racism found” that literally runs for a day or two. Two, is the absence of any apology or at least the recognition by the charging authorities, let alone the protesters, for the damage done to the individual or the institution in the absence of tested evidence.
That said, we need, to add some nuance and complexity to the two events in response to those who gleefully make theclaim that “there was no racism” and that this is “typical” (I hate the South African use of that word in race debates) of black accusers who see racial prejudice in everything. I have no doubt Boucher and his white teammates sang those derogatory racist songs in the early years of our democracy; that kind of repulsive behaviour was common across institutions as white privilege was forced to give way to black inclusion. We have major research on this topic about to be published regarding white schools. In fact, Boucher did apologise to Adams for that behaviour. That is where a wiser and more mature CSA would have tried to resolve the matter in private reconciliation and in public gesture instead of an investigation that ended in this embarrassing cul-de-sac.
And while the Brackenfell school is off the hook, white parents who organised that private matric ball should at the very least be asked the question: how is it possible that children from a public school in SA are still so segregated in their daily lives? The event at Skilpadvlei Wine Farm (hardly a name that denotes speed when it comes to transformation) shows up deeper, unresolved racial fissures in our society — desegregated schools, segregated lives. It’s almost 30 years since the end of apartheid, Brackenfell school and parents.
We can all do better.
