The cacophony around Vicki Momberg's jail sentence has been deafening. All around, people have fallen over themselves in the rush to jeer her into her cell at Sun City - or to point fingers at Julius Malema and scream "double standards", as if the EFF leaders' bile towards whites somehow justifies Momberg's disgusting racist rant.
This story is not about all that. This story is about a word that cuts like a knife.
Years ago, I owned a beautiful Volkswagen Beetle. There was a tradition among some Beetle owners that the best place to keep a spare ignition key was under one of the indicator light lenses on the front fender. I didn't do that, but I knew the story and thought it sort of cool, in a stupid way - it isn't difficult to bust open a Volla's indicators.
The car had to live in the street outside my home. That was OK because a security company worked our block and life was quiet in our slumbering street. And so it was, until one night, when I arrived home from a weekend away and the Beetle was gone. No one had seen it go.The insurance company sent an assessor to grill me about it. He was an older man, with the face of someone who had lived hard and with no shortage of bitterness.
I suppose insurance investigators must always think the worst of people and it was clear from his aggressive questioning - including asking me about maybe having a spare key under one of the indicators - that he thought I was trying to scam my insurers.
I pointed out that the car had lived on the street for some considerable time - more than a year, in fact - and that the guards had always kept an eye on it.
He smiled at me with twinkling eyes then offered - in a few clipped sentences laced with racial slurs - his opinion on what he thought had happened.
It was a moment I have never forgotten. It was revolting on every level - the words, the bitterness, the hatred that fell from his mouth like vomit.
I remember thinking if those words shocked me, how they must hurt black people.
That word is a jagged knife, a dumdum bullet. It is the ugliest word in Afrikaans or English, usually delivered with a nasty twist of the mouth.
If the slurs weren't bad enough, his assumption that I was complicit in his world view was like being spattered with bile. With shaking hands I signed the assessment form and muttered that I did not share his views. He scuttled back to his car and roared off.
I had seen this before. Throughout my life, people have made assumptions about me based purely on my "tribe" - white men. It carried on, even after democracy had consigned apartheid's corpse to the swamp from which it had crawled and South Africa looked forward to a new day.Meanwhile, the outrages continue. Momberg. The farmers who stuffed a frightened man into a coffin. Penny Sparrow. The residents at the University of the Free State who abused the black women cleaners in a revolting "prank" video. The high-school boys who murdered a homeless man for fun. The restaurant manager who threw boiling water on an employee who was eating leftovers. The students who filmed themselves using racist language in a Pretoria bar.
South Africa is an equal-opportunity country for racism. All you have to do is read the comments section on just about every news story to see racial hatred from all sides.
Some days our democracy feels as fragile as a candle flame in a hurricane. We have to be better than this.
In learning to respect other races, a good start is to stop assuming members of your "tribe" all think the same way. To those who make assumptions about me: I don't know how you speak to the people you meet during your day. But do not tar me with your brush.
People are angry. Angry with "baasskap", angry with being talked down to, angry with disdain and white superiority and rudeness. And especially angry with racist slurs.
If it doesn't stop now, when will it? The threat of fines and public ridicule clearly do not have the desired effect. Maybe Momberg's looming jail term will...