Johannesburg - This time it is the Gautrain. Last time – March 2021, remember – it was when eNCA reporter Lindsay Detlinger who claimed to not be racist after we had witnessed her act in a patently racist manner when she insisted that black politicians don their masks – ‘over your nose too’ – while she was fine with white politicians speaking to her without their masks donned. Racism? Verily.
Expectedly, Detlinger – as the Gautrain management will probably claim about similar racism – denied she was a racist, and the matter was put down to a mistake caused by the usual pressures of the job, meaning, an honest oversight.
Well, they said, she was in all probability, must have been a damsel in distress – caught up in a web of her own making, that we should cut her some slack, let it slide, and get on with our lives. But alas! I digress. Back to our racist pics in our beloved elite train, the Gautrain.
The type of apparently inadvertent racism, a societal malaise, once again, broke surface, bluntly displayed on the Gautrain, which has no doubt made life easier for the middle-class, much as it has created thousands of jobs, to its much-deserved credit.
Deservedly, the operators, management, marketing and advertising teams of the high speed train – should be called out on the undesirable racism expressed – whether inadvertently, by design or omission – in their vaccination advertisements, now replaced by other ads – that exhibited a disconcerting pictorial message: that blacks must always be masked because they probably carry a more potent form of pathogens of the Coronavirus, whereas, whites need not really be masked because they presumably do not carry any pathogens of the Coronavirus: evidence there for all to see.
The three advertisements that were meant to encourage South Africans to vaccinate, show two photographs of an African and Asian man masked, whereas, the photograph of a white woman is shown unmasked: by any definition in any society that seeks to stamp out subliminal racism in advertising, this is racism. It must be bluntly called what it is, simply, white racism. The BEE partners of the Gautrain were probably snoozing.
Executives, senior managers whose entities operate and manage the Gautrain and their service providers who were involved in the ideation, creation, curation and approval of these advertisements, should be castigated harshly, because this type of racism suggests that only blacks are carriers of the Coronavirus, while whites are disease-free.
The Gauteng Provincial Government, specifically, the Premier, David Makhura, should summon the operators of the Gautrain to explain how and why they approved the curation and display of such despicably racist advertisements on the Gautrain.
But, if the Premier of the wealthiest province – which accounts for a third of the national income of South Africa – is not prepared to erase all types of racial discrimination from our experience, including on the Gautrain, then perhaps our prayerful behest should be for the Premier to give way to someone far more courageous in their crack of the the whip. Facing off against racism is no staple for wimps. It is the calling of courageous hearts.
At any rate, our Constitution, behoves the Premier of Gauteng to act decisively, rake over the coals the operators and marketing communications who approved these definitively racist advertisements on the Gautrain.
Perhaps, it can be opined, that more than half a century of state-sponsored racism to sink the dignity of black people in South Africa, could not possibly be overcome with any pretence to permanency of change, in a time span of about three decades since former president Nelson Mandela was released from prison.
In other words, no change of heart can be legislated into the reality of experience.
Yet, the difficulty of the task, the eradication of racism, should not daunt us from such an honourable endeavour to rid our country of all forms of racial discrimination, blatant or subtle, within the ambit of our grand constitution.
Racism is a horrible scourge that undermines the dignity of the citizenry of our country and clearly such ads should have been curated by people with some commonsense, to depict the ideal of equality and respect for human dignity expressed in our constitution, rather than the clodhoppers who approved the abundantly racist ads, thus further deepening the real, yet invisible chasm between and among various races.
Though we no longer have to don our masks when outdoors – ‘Oh, Cyril boet! You verskillende oke’ – we still have to slap them on when travelling on the Gautrain. Perhaps, gleaning from the abominable racist ads, for the Gautrain bigwigs, only black people should wear masks, while white people need not really, unless they feel the need: the more things change, the more they stay the same. Maybe, devil if I would ever know, things will change as they change, for a change.
Yet, for now, the entire thing is a rosette of putrid shame. A blight. We are the worst for it. Heaven help us.