How do we stop racism, asks commission tasked to deal with it

“Chings”, “disgusting”, “freaks”, death threats,– the South African Chinese community was on the receiving end of some rather unsettling remarks on social media recently while celebrating their biggest annual holiday, Chinese New Year.

The community has lodged a complaint with the South African Human Rights Commission, which has confirmed it has received a spike in race-related complaints involving social media platforms.

This week it held a two-day hearing to discuss how to fix the racism situation, and the possibility of a consolidate, multi-faceted approach.

“Racism is still a serious concern in South Africa and the commission recognises this, as the majority of complaints we received based on statistics from our previous financial year illustrates this,” said Gushwell Brooks of the South African Human Rights Commission.

The commission does not identify social media as a specific category to receive human rights complaints but it is increasingly being cited as a “location” where race-based equality complaints occur.

However, Brooks said this is not representative of the whole of South Africa.

“There are only 12 million Facebook users out of a population of 55 million South Africans. These social media users also have a presence on social media platforms and thus do not account for all or most South Africans.”

He said social media activity that garnered much public and media attention should not be seen as reflective of the entire South African population.

Emma Sadleir, a media law consultant said:

“Racism has always existed. But I think it used to be confined to people’s private lounges and private dining room tables. Now that we treat social media as our personal publishing platform, this content now is being published and people find out about it and call each other out much more quickly.”

South Africans have been very reactive on social media regarding racist incidents online but some racial groups tend to get more attention than others. Recently an outbreak of hate was directed at the Chinese community in South Africa.

Sadleir said: “I think we’re pretty good about knowing we can’t be racist against black people, white people and Indian people but the Chinese community has been slow to assert their rights. And they are as South African as the rest of us.”

Out of the 749 complaints the commission has received regarding infringements to the right to equality, 505 were race-based in this past financial year.

“I think to a lot of us it feels that there’s a lot more racism but I don’t think that there is. I think that people are being caught more,” she said.

Brooks maintained that this was a collective responsibility.

“Spikes of racist interactions via social media are a clear indicator that much work needs to be done by all sectors of society including government, civil society and the private sector."