The case of Belinda Magor – the Benoni resident who used social media to go on a racist rant against black people – is another call for us as South Africans to tackle the elephant in the room as far as our democracy is concerned – the scourge of racism still embedded in our society.
In doing so we must first come to terms with the fact that 1994 could legally have brought to an end the racist system of apartheid but race and racism continue to impact how South Africans relate to each other across the colour line.
Two weeks ago Magor came out in defence of pitbulls – the dog breed that has been in the news following a recent spate of the mauling of children by these pets. In an audio clip that went viral, she could be heard saying that black men are “worse than pitbulls’’.
“Ban the black man. They rape, steal and kill, worse than any pitbull could, and they get away with it… Get all the black women and cut out their uteruses and ovaries so that they cannot procreate. They [children] will all turn out the same because they are all the same.
“I am passionate about this. Ban them, kill them, shoot them and get rid of them because they are the problem, not pit bulls, not animals. Animals are beautiful and they deserve a warm bed, food, love and attention and everything else. God created those animals. Who created the black man? Do you think God did, I don’t think so,’’ she said in the clip.
Magor has since been arrested and criminally charged for her racist rant
As some commentators have stated Magor’s racist outburst is an indication of how we have not as a nation systematically dealt with the racist legacy of apartheid and colonialism.
This is because we pretended that after 1994 – wherein the black majority won the political power that they had been denied for centuries and racial discrimination outlawed – we did not put in place concrete mechanisms to build the non-racial South Africa that the liberation struggle was about.
Our misguided attitude was “we are now a non-racial society where racism is outlawed and bigots must face the wrath of the law.”
The problem with this attitude is that it is superficial because it does not deal with the effects of years of racism on both the victim and the perpetrator – which can impede the achievement of a non-racial South Africa.
For example, reducing Magor to a “mere bigot” who lives in the past in a new South Africa is ahistorical. This is because that new South Africa has not purged itself of the vestiges of a system that racialised and dehumanised black people simply because of their skin colour thereby breeding people like Magor.
Unlike just being a “mere bigot” Magor is a product of a system that instilled in her the kind of racial supremacy (as a white person) which makes her believe that she is superior to black people and can therefore treat them as inhumanly as she has now done.
Rather than seeing Magor as a “mere bigot”, we must understand her behaviour in the context of her as a beneficiary of the racism defined by Clinical Psychologist Garth Stevens as “the unsupported notion that biological hierarchies exist among humans in the form of distinct “races”, and attempts to justify the economic, political and social exploitation of certain social groups by others.”
As Stevens avers we must also understand racism “as a social phenomenon which conceals, contradicts and obscures uneven social relations.”
This is the essence of racism – the scourge that as a society we must fight if we are to eventually build a non-racial egalitarian South Africa.
To achieve this we must first move away from our refusal to deal with the issue of race and how it continues to determine how the dice roll when it comes to our future as South Africans.
Secondly, we must then acknowledge that as South Africans we have an unfortunate history whereby our racial make-up has determined our ability to become full citizens in a country where we enjoy full rights and the ability to express our full potential as human beings.
To achieve this we need to come up with a counter-system in which both the beneficiaries and victims of both colonial and apartheid racism work together in building a non-racial and egalitarian South Africa in which all citizens can express their full potential as human beings.
To this end, it is important that beyond the criminal justice system, there is a need for an anti-racist programme which can be implemented in schools. This programme should be based on the understanding that it is not enough to “not be racist”.
As civil right activist Angela Davis avers, such a programme should be about instilling in all South Africans “the understanding of the impact of centuries of an evil system that has dehumanised both its beneficiaries and victims.”
It is most importantly about helping all South Africans develop a new consciousness that challenges the current milieu in which racism has become more clandestine. In personal terms, it means understanding how the larger forces have ingrained in us a particular outlook on our role as citizens – that perpetuates the current situation in the country of massive socio-economic inequalities based largely on race.