SPARROW BRAINS AND MORE

If Penny Sparrow and Chris Hart believed their racist outbursts on social media would qualify them to what Andy Warhol described as 15 minutes of fame, it did not. Rather it qualifies them to a lifetime of infamy reserved for racist bigots and hate mongers. Sparrow and Hart are a reflection of the thinking of a nucleus of white South Africans who experienced the life of privilege under the apartheid regime. The only difference is Sparrow and Hart could no longer contain themselves. Expressing their racism on social media was an emotional release of accumulated deep-seated anger and frustration - a cathartic imperative in the context of challenging social, economic and political conditions in the country. Sparrow and Hart's diatribes are indefensible. They do, however, affirm that racism is alive and well in South Africa. It festers like a blistering skin disorder that can only be treated when all its ugliness is exposed. The racial divide between white and black South Africans did not, as it turns out, undergo a positive metamorphosis after the collapse of the apartheid regime. Racism amongst a nucleus of white South Africans was alive, but overshadowed by rainbow nation exuberance. It simply went underground, and has now surfaced in the form of overt bigoted comments on social media. Those who comprise the white racist nucleus belong to a generation that is dying out. Their racism will die with them. Their descendants, born after 1994, have not inherited the racism of their forefathers and mothers. Therein lies one of the miracle ingredients for a non-racial rainbow nation.