Most students, well those that I studied with, either spent time waiting tables at restaurants before, during or post their time at university. It can be a soul-destroying job, as one can be treated literally like a wet rag. And it’s these types of incidents that teaches you a lot about certain individuals. Regular contributor Ed Hersbt reflects on the recent racist incidents involving Xolela Mancgu, which became #spinachgate, and Ntokozo Qwabe. He draws parallels between this behaviour and that which is burning down universities across the country. Ed asks what good purpose does it serve to humiliate those waiting on tables and what does such behaviour say about those who choose to conduct themselves in this way? Another in-depth read. – Stuart Lowman
By Ed Herbst*
Trapped in a binary, essentialist cast of mind – where black pain and victimhood square off against white domination and privilege – their discourse has already moved from a regressive leftist fringe to the centre of politics. They view whites as aliens, or “1652s” in their jarring parlance; predatory immigrants who might, ultimately, be unassimilable into their new world order – Michael Cardo Are ‘1652s’ the new Jews? 12/4/2016
The norm of human presence in South Africa should be neither black nor white: it should be our common humanity as articulated in the foundational values of our Constitution. – Dave Steward Politicsweb 18/10/2016
Did the SABC with its huge reach adequately use its influence during the HIV-Aids pandemic which eventually claimed an estimated 337 000 lives and left too many children as orphans?
While researching this question I came across the following passage on page 100 in the book The Virus, Vitamins and Vegetables: The South African HIV/AIDS Mystery by Kerry Cullinan and Anso Thom:
‘An awful aspect of going out anywhere with (Ronald Suresh) Roberts was the regular prospect that he would start abusing the waiter – in Cape Town usually a young white male. It was the strangest thing, this compulsion to degrade and humiliate in order for his evening to be complete. The order would take too long or the wine wasn’t cold enough or some other petty thing; and whereas normal people could sort things out, Roberts had to make an unpleasant scene. The endpoint would be total humiliation’, say Brink.
The Brink referred to in the book is Anthony Brink, who is regarded as one of the country’s leading AIDS denialists and the quote is from a book he wrote Lying and Thieving: The Fraudulent Scholarship of Ronald Suresh Roberts.
Brink and Roberts were once friends but became estranged.
Reading the passage one got the impression that Brink felt that Roberts was not a nice, gentle, kind and empathetic man in whose veins the milk of human kindness flowed strongly.
…Brink claims that Roberts ‘has no concern for his fellow man, absolutely none’ and that he is ‘entirely devoid of conscience or compassion’ and is a bully.
Defamation suit
As the book points out, Brink’s opinion of Roberts seems to have been vindicated by a defamation suit that Roberts brought against the Sunday Times for an article written by Chris Barron.
It cost Roberts a million rand because the presiding judge, Leslie Weinkove, seemed to find accord with Brink in this regard and awarded court costs against Roberts. You can find Weinkove’s unflattering assessment of Roberts here.
“Mr Roberts, you were obsessive… and also haughty, arrogant, self-important, a name-dropper, excessive, outlandish, vindictive, venomous, relentless, evasive, argumentative, opportunistic, unconvincing and untruthful.”
Reading Brink’s account of how Roberts treated restaurant staff, I had a sudden flash of recognition – are there not also parallels in the restaurant behaviour of one of the most notorious Fallists, Ntokozo Qwabe and Xolela Mancgu, the man who constantly refers to himself as an intellectual?
Qwabe achieved local and international notoriety when he deliberately humiliated a white waitress, who was working for R15 an hour plus tips to help support her mother who was suffering from terminal cancer. He did this because she was white, a woman, poorer than him and who found herself in a subordinate position to him. His father condemned his behaviour as did the ANC and an outraged local and international response saw a crowd-funding initiative compensate her with some R140 000. Ironically, this was probably the biggest tip in world history.
Taking his ethnic hatred of whites a step further – the antithesis of the Nelson Mandela policy of nation building through reconciliation – Qwabe who studied in the serenity of Oxford University, then disrupted a law lecture at UCT. In contravention of the constitutional edict to protest peacefully, Qwabe used a stick he was carrying to smash the phone out of the hand of a student who was recording his abusive behaviour.
Altercation
Xolela Mancgu, according to a senior executive of the Spur group, Pierre van Tonder, alleged that the Hussar Grill restaurant in Rondebosch was ‘racist’ during an altercation that became known as Spinachgate. I have been a patron there for decades, have never experienced it as racist and have no knowledge of it being described as such, either before or after this unpleasant episode. It is justifiably popular for good food at reasonable prices, a happy ambience and hardworking and attentive staff who carry out their duties with unobtrusive pleasantness.
Mancgu, who constantly plays the race card, went on to suggest that a UCT colleague, David Benatar was a racist because he had written a ‘racially-offensive diatribe’. Benatar denied this and Francois Jurgens, a PhD student in the Department of Private Law at UCT, questioned Mancgu’s description of Benatar as a racist in a Daily Maverick article.
The idea of ‘Burning whiteness’ has been a common call to arms in the Fallist campaign which has seen incalculable reputational and financial harm being done to this country – extensive, multi-million rand building damage, assault with intent to do grievous bodily harm, theft, virulent anti-Semitism, one person dying and the attempted murder of others.
(In a City Press editorial in February, the then editor Ferial Haffajee asked:
“How long before the burning of pictures of white people becomes the burning of white humans?”
The headline: Attempted murder charges laid after protesters lock CPUT guards in burning building gave an answer to her question – a matter of months.)
Would it be fair to append to the above-mentioned people the term ‘Race Merchants’ penned by Ernst Roets, the deputy CEO of AfriForum?
Antipathy towards the rapidly-dwindling white minority is growing with President Jacob Zuma describing his white fellow-citizens as ‘snakes’ before the recent municipal elections – something which evoked disturbing memories of the term ‘cockroaches’ which was used as a justification for the Rwandan genocide.
Innately evil
Gillian Schutte, in articles given massive and sustained coverage in the Sunday Independent by editor Jovial Rantao, (the newly-appointed ombudsman for INMSA which has withdrawn from the SA Press Council), suggests that whites are not only born innately evil but are irredeemably so. Somehow, I cannot reconcile her mindset with what I know about people like Alan Paton, Peter Brown, Beyers Naude, Helen Suzman, Nadine Gordimer, Elsa Joubert, Barbara Hogan, Denis Goldberg or Helen Zille to cite just a few.
Clearly disturbed by the ethnic hatred towards whites displayed by the Fallists in their ‘Burning whiteness” campaign, a Cape Times- supported campaign which included the clear intention to burn the University of Cape Town to the ground, Judge Roshini Allie, in her Cape High Court ruling of 12 May, quoted Nelson Mandela’s speech from the dock during the Rivonia trial:
- It is apposite to remind the respondents of the sentiments expressed by the late State President, Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela on 20 April 1964 in his opening address in the dock:
“…I have fought against white domination, and I have fought against black domination. I have cherished the ideal of a democratic and free society in which all persons will live together in harmony with equal opportunities …”
- The former State President made clear the objectionable and heinous nature of both white domination and black domination in that speech.
The Cape Times deliberately withheld this information from its readers and, sadly, there are those who today denigrate Mandela as a sell-out and his ideals as ‘Rainbowism’. I, for one, have wistful memories of those halcyon days, two decades ago, when we had a government of National Unity, when we sincerely believed that our hopes and dreams, and the hopes and dreams for which Nelson Mandela spent much of his life in prison, would be realised.
The Race Merchants seek to reduce those dreams, like the Sanlam Auditorium at the University of Johannesburg, to rubble and ashes by relentlessly trying to divide us.
Some of the people who serve at night at restaurants have spent much of the day attending lectures in the hopes of realising their ambitions and the dreams of their parents and could well continue their studies when the restaurant closes.
What good purpose does it serve to humiliate them and what does such behaviour say about those who choose to conduct themselves in this way?
- Ed Herbst is a retired veteran journalist who writes in his own capacity.
