The civil rights organisation AfriForum today expressed its concern about the gross double standards which are begin applied when racist incidents are reported on or are discussed in the general discourse. The organisation also appealed to Government, the media and all role-players to be consistent in their condemnation of all forms of racism.

Ernst Roets, Deputy CEO of AfriForum, refers to the hi-jack drama Wednesday in Rustenburg during which Marlene Hurford and Grant Short were severely assaulted by three black people and were allegedly threatened with the words: “Vandag vrek julle wit bliksems” (Today, you white buggers will die). After Hurford had blocked her stolen tablet, one of the attackers allegedly called the last number that she dialled and threatened: “You white bitch, I’m coming for you.”

Roets says that violent crimes in which white people are the victims and black people the offenders are not condemned with the same enthusiasm as cases where black people are the victims and white people the offenders.

“It seems that when a white person is the victim and a black person the offender, it is generally dismissed as ‘normal crime’. In cases where a white person is the offender and a black person the victim, however, these are immediately regarded as a racist incident.”

Roets also notes that the year has so far seen a legion of such examples and that the inconsistent condemnation of racism is not only reflected in the manner in which these cases are reported on, but also in the prosecution of offenders.

In January this year, Penny Sparrow, a dismissed estate agent from KwaZulu-Natal, referred to black people as “apes” on her Facebook page. The Equality Court of Umzinto in Scottburgh fined Sparrow R150 000 for hate speech, which she has to pay over to the Oliver & Adelaide Tambo Foundation.

In contrast, Velaphi Khumalo, an employee of the Provincial Department of Sport, Culture and Recreation, also wrote on his Facebook page in January that he wanted to cleanse the country of whites and that whites should be treated in the same way that Hitler had treated the Jews.  In a second posting on Facebook he said that white people in South Africa deserved to be butchered like Jews and be killed. The Department suspended Khumalo with payment pending an internal disciplinary investigation. He has not yet been sentenced by the Equality Court.

In the same week that the hair policy of a Pretorian high school was put in the spotlight and was condemned because of a rule that girls may not wear Afro’s to school, Luvuyo Menziwa, a member of the Student Representative Council (SRC) of the University of Pretoria, wrote on his Facebook page that he wants to mow down white people with a bazooka and machine gun. Although he was removed from the SRC, the internal disciplinary investigation against him is still pending.

The manner in which these cases were handled makes it seems like telling school children not to wear Afro’s to school has become a national crisis, whereas a black person expressing his desire to kill white people is viewed as being relatively normal and commonplace.

“These double standards are also visible in the praising of the #FeesMustFall campaign and the #MustFall movement in general, while it is general knowledge that various leaders of this movement have stated in public that white people should be killed and that Hitler was a hero,” Roets says.

He adds that it is very clear that the authors of the ANC’s Prevention and Combating of Hate Speech Bill wants to incarcerate white people who make snide remarks against black people, while the same authors fails to condemn black people who are inciting murder or even genocide of white people.