JONATHAN JANSEN: The rush to cry 'racism!' exposes the sanctimonious hypocrites
'The hypocrisy is staggering. Among these sanctimonious voices are people who probably have different cups and plates for the gardener and domestic'
IT IS a scene that plays out hundreds of times a day across South Africa. A driver in a bakkie offers a lift to someone on the street. The lift-seeker jumps onto the back of the pickup to be dropped off closer to his or her destination. Just another day in Mzansi, you would think, when a man in the Eastern Cape offers a lift to a woman who needs to travel 60km to her doctor‘s appointment in Cradock. And then all hell breaks loose. Someone takes a photo which is posted online. Oh no. The man is white and the woman black. The driver of course sits in front while the woman sits on the open back of the bakkie. The woman is pregnant and occupies the open sheep‘s cage that fills the back of the bakkie — there is no other place to sit. Titillating its audience, the media pounces with the suggestion of racism. Shortly thereafter the woman is interviewed and makes it clear that it was her choice to sit at the back because of the intolerable heat inside the vehicle. Too late, South Africans w...
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