BARRY STREEK, Cape Town | Friday
RACISM is alive and well in Cape Town, even for judges of the High Court, as Cape Town Judge President John Hlope has found out.
He is a keen gardener at his home in the leafy suburb of Pinelands but this has confused local whites three times since he moved there in 1995.
In the latest incident, one of his neighbours popped her head over fence and said she had noticed that he kept the garden well.
She then asked whether he would be prepared to work in her garden.
”I said that time permitting, I would consider it. At least she wasn’t arrogant like the other two people and she has probably found out who I am now,” he said in an interview.
In the two previous incidents the people walked in and demanded to know who the owner of the home was and when he told them, they just walked out without any apology or response.
In the second of these, ”I was working in my garden with the gate wide open.
This man walked in and asked where are the people living in this house.
”When I told him I was, he just walked without saying anything. He didn’t even say sorry.”
Hlope said he was frequently being stopped and asked if he was a chauffeur because he owns a large Mercedes Benz S320.
”They just do not want to believe that I own such a car. It has happened three times, it has happened 25 times. It is though they cannot believe I can own it. It is as though I must be either be a chauffeur or it has been stolen.”
He could not believe the arrogance of these people: ”You don’t even have to hear them swearing to know they think you are just a kaffir.”
Recently, he parked his car at the Rygersdal sports complex to fetch his son, who had been playing soccer. When he returned to the car he found five men standing next to it and talking loudly about Tony Yengeni in relation to it.
”They were talking about Tony Yengeni as if my car had been stolen.”
In another incident, he went to a farm to buy some chickens. After paying for the goods and returning to his car, he was asked: ”Do you own this car?”
When he replied in the affirmative, his interrogator said nothing.
He said he had never seen any white person being asked a question about whether they owned a car, and it could only be because he was a black person that he was questioned this way.
Hlope said incidents like these made him very angry but then added: ”It is one of those things.”
It must also remind him of someone being found guilty and being sentenced without any form of a trial simply on the basis of their appearance or colour.
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