Maybe race is still too big an obsession for South Africans to have a reasonable discussion about it.
Real, old-style racism has been driven underground — into private discussions around the braai fire and nasty little corners on the internet. Honest public discussion about race is rare. Every now and again, there’s a big row about something or other. Once it dies down again, everybody goes back to politely skirting the issue.
The detail of how race continues to shape our society, the racial undertones in everything from the selection of Luke Watson to the ANC succession debate, these are hardly spoken about.
Mail & Guardian columnist John Matshikiza bursts into this silence with a determination to speak plainly. His pieces are full of Jews, Afrikaners, natives and darkies. The intention of his blunt, often tongue-in-cheek style, he told me, is to spark debate. ”The tetchiness of the race debate continues to plague us,” he said.
But a recent series of articles on the Chinese community has been sharply criticised. The columns ”are incitement for racial hatred and crimes against Chinese in this country”, writes one correspondent. They are inaccurate and ”incite a new yellow peril”, write Yoon Jung Park and Tu Huynh in a right to reply article.
Looking over the columns again in the light of the responses, I thought that there were grounds to criticise the first one, which in January described the new Chinatown that has developed in Cyrildene.
Yoon and Tu demonstrated their argument by recasting a passage from the column to refer to Zulus instead of Chinese: ”This new Zulutown is a different story altogether. The suburb is owned and run by hardcore Zulus from KwaZulu-Natal itself. The lingua franca is Zulu, or whatever they speak out there,” and so on.
Hardcore Zulus? It seems clear that this kind of writing would be offensive.
Even if this wasn’t the intention, one has a sense that the column traded on stereotypes, as in its references to ”mysterious fah-fee traders” and ”inscrutable hawkers”.
He also discussed the way the Chinese are apparently taking over the world. Although the tone was light, it is hard to avoid a sense that a ”yellow peril” was being evoked.
In response to the criticism, Matshikiza used a recent column to defend the Cyrildene piece as being mainly about language, but it was not persuasive. There was more in it than just issues of communication.
The second column was a different kettle of fish. Judging from his description, the massage parlour he tried to visit in Chinatown was clearly racist, and so made itself a perfectly legitimate subject for reporting. Yoon and Tu ask whether the M&G is the right place to ”out” racists. Well, why not? The case is very similar to that of the Centurion barber who refused to cut the hair of Jody Kollapen of the Human Rights Commission. He also drew media attention.
Some correspondents have construed Matshikiza’s mention of the massage parlour’s address and his call to ”darkies” to show up and ask for massages as incitement to violence. I don’t share that view. It was a suggestion for an innovative and peaceful way to demonstrate disapproval.
But one should not forget the context. The sharp reaction to this column was fuelled by his earlier one — the two were read together, and understood as a concerted attack on an embattled community.
There is a sense in the Chinese community that they are under pressure on many fronts: although treated as ”non-white” under apartheid, they are now excluded from benefiting from affirmative action legislation. There is also a sense that members of the community are disproportionately targeted by criminals. Just a few weeks ago, community leader Gino Feng, owner of Johannesburg’s China Express newspaper, was shot dead in his home by robbers.
It is no wonder the community responds strongly to criticism.
The row leaves us with a larger question: where is the line between much-needed frankness in the discussion of race, and unacceptable racism and xenophobia?
Hate speech is clearly beyond the pale, but the term is much misused. Despite what some correspondents said, it doesn’t apply to these columns.
But there’s an area short of hate speech that is still offensive. In the end, I’m left with gratitude to Matshikiza for wanting to speak plainly about race and the integration of immigrant communities, but a sense that there must be a different way of doing it.
The M&G’s ombud provides an independent view of the paper’s journalism. If you have any complaints you would like addressed, you can contact Franz Krüger at [email protected]. You can also phone the paper on 011 250 7300 and leave a message