Two South African schools in Pietermaritzburg, KwaZulu-Natal, have been under fire, after their White students allegedly referred to their Black peers as “kaffirs,” which is a degrading word for Black Africans.
The two schools, Pietermaritzburg Girls’ High (GHS) and Maritzburg College (a boys’ school, which I attended), are both prestigious and of course historically white.
These schools are also hotbeds of accepted racism.
For example, the GHS girl who is accused of being the voice behind two audio recordings that state, “F*cking kaffirs don’t know how to pronounce my name,” and, “Flipping kaffirs not knowing how to flipping spell and pronounce my name,” was said to have been defended by the school.
Her antics were downplayed since she was allegedly “stressed” and “confused” by the pressure of approaching exams.
The Maritzburg College boy, who is said to be a prefect and captain of the first XV Rugby team, is accused of calling other pupils “kaffirs” on two separate occasions. These offenses only seemed to result in him being suspended for a week; he was later allowed to resume his leadership role.
For its part, the school claims to have followed proper procedure, according to the Schools Act, when questioned as to why the boy was allowed to retain his position as prefect.
However, according to reports, the incident was not reported to the Department of Education, which indicates that the school was likely “trying to hide it.”
The common denominator in both cases is that the perpetrators’ actions are being excused and justified.
How do you justify racism?
In an exchange on Twitter with a lady who I presume to be a college parent, she accused me of being biased and uninformed on the matter, tweeting:
# racism works both ways. Get the facts.
No, no, it doesn’t “work both ways.” Someone is not racist merely as a result of another person being racist: if you’re racist, you’re racist, and if your child is racist, they most probably learned that at home.
In fact, DJ Fresh of Metro FM recently echoed my sentiments in the following tweet:
Because 94 happened does not mean kids raised racist in the 70s and 80s have not passed that shit onto their kids! #Sad #MaritzburgCollege
— DJ Fresh (Big Dawg) (@DJFreshSA) June 11, 2017
