A “racist column” has cost well-known Sunday Times columnist David Bullard his job, Business Day reported on Friday.
“He wrote a racist column on Sunday. I had a conversation with him on Tuesday, I told him that what he wrote was unacceptable,” the newspaper quoted Sunday Times editor Mondli Makhanya as saying. “It went against the values of this newspaper.”
In the column, which appeared on April 7 under the title “Uncolonised Africa wouldn’t know what it was missing”, Bullard asks readers to “imagine for a moment what life would be like in South Africa if the evil white man hadn’t come to disturb the rustic idyll of the early black settlers”.
He goes on to describe an “undisturbed” South Africa with unmined resources, no roads, no television or internet — and no whisky and cigars.
He concludes: “Then something happens that will change this undisturbed South Africa forever. Huge metal ships land on the coast and big metal flying birds are sent to explore the sparsely populated hinterland.
“They are full of men from a place called China and they are looking for coal, metal, oil, platinum, farmland, fresh water and cheap labour and lots of it. Suddenly the indigenous population realise what they have been missing all along: someone to blame. At last their prayers have been answered.”
Speaking on Talk Radio 702 on Friday morning, Makhanya said the column was “extremely, extremely, extremely offensive” and “totally against the values of the Sunday Times and the country”.
He denied that any outside pressures had played a role in the decision to axe Bullard.