South Africa has been rocked by yet another high-profile racial incident and the government has served notice that it is losing patience.
A guesthouse owner in the pristine Sodwana Bay resort on the KwaZulu-Natal coast has hit a nerve by refusing to accommodate black people or government officials. Andre Slade’s e-mail response to a prospective customer went viral and made headlines around the country.
Instead of backing down, Slade has subsequently issued several racially provocative statements. These include his belief that the Bible states that black people should be servants and that he supports the Apartheid system which was declared a crime against humanity by the United Nations in the 1980s.
With about 2,000 protestors outside the lodge on Wednesday, Slade told journalists that God had created whites with a “crown” on their heads. In televised comments, he said Apartheid was based on the laws of Christianity and that “just like apricot and peach, we are not the same”.
KwaZulu-Natal Tourism MEC Sihle Zikalala has opened a case of hate speech, illegal operation and tax evasion against Slade who said he has now closed his guesthouse.
Earlier this year, a Durban woman, Penny Sparrow, was ordered to pay US$10,000 to the Oliver and Adelaide Tambo Foundation for posting racist comments on Facebook, where she called black people monkeys. That incident sparked a national outcry and she went into hiding after receiving death threats.
And earlier this month, the South African Human Rights Commission (SAHRC) confirmed that it was investigating mobile phone footage taken of a white woman, who claimed to have been a victim of crime, racially insulting a black policeman in Johannesburg.
The woman refused to be helped by a black policeman and referred to blacks as “kaffirs”, the worst racial slur in the country. The woman is also recorded as saying Johannesburg policemen were “opinionated, arrogant and plain and simply useless”.
