Author Dan Roodt is facing the heat after he posted about the pilot who died after his Impala jet crashed at Saldanha Bay on the West Coast.
The highly decorated pilot, James O'Connell died on impact. While others sent their condolences to his family, Roodt took to X before the identity was revealed and insinuated that the pilot was a black diversity hire who was underqualified for the job and that was the cause of the crash.
In a now deleted post, he wrote: "A South African Air Force Impala crashed at the Saldanha Air Show today. As ever, one wonders whether the pilot was appointed on merit or whether the 142 race laws against white people played a role?"
Pushback was swift against Roodt. Fellow author Khaya Dlanga accused Roodt of using the tragedy to race bait.
"Why would you use the death of someone as an opportunity for race baiting? Why in God's name would you even make this assumption? Secondly, why only issue condolences once you were informed that the pilot was white?" Dlanga posted.
Roodt refuted the claims of race baiting. "It just looked so incongruous that the only immediate explanation that I could think of was that he or she may have been simply appointed on racial grounds, as happens in so many other professions in SA.
"We know that the state normally discriminates against white people so that could have explained why there might have been a lack of expertise on the part of the pilot. This was a 'false positive' for which I apologise as my information was wrong, but it does not detract from the thousands of other cases where accidents do happen because of affirmative action," Roodt responded.
Escalating the matter, Roodt added that there is a Holocaust of Affirmative Action and Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) in the country.
It wasn't race baiting. It just looked so incongruous that the only immediate explanation that I could think of was that he or she may have been simply appointed on racial grounds, as happens in so many other professions in SA. Also, I thought it was an Airforce and not a private…
— Dan Roodt (@danroodt) March 23, 2025
IOL