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What possessed Adam Catzavelos to take time out of his idyllic Greek holiday to spew hatred against blacks? Was it the ouzo, the tsipouro, the retsina or the raki? Was it a combination of the above, exacerbated by the blazing Mediterranean sun? Whichever it was, it brought out his inner warped being and exposed him for the vile racist he is.
Catzavelos now joins a long list of racists who were bold and stupid enough to share their bigotry with the world. The names Vicki Momberg and Penny Sparrow spring to mind. While some of these people have been punished, what is clear is that we have not dealt with society’s structural racism that spawns them. Creatures such as these breed and survive in an environment that nurtures them.
Scholar and academic Achille Mbembe, who has looked closely at the phenomenon, argues that, to conquer racism, it is necessary to understand its nature and its mutation.
Once understood, a series of weapons must be deployed to fight it permanently, including education, using culture to make it uncool for young people to be racist and forming strong antiracism coalitions. One of the strongest weapons against racism, says Mbembe, is to ensure racist individuals and entities “pay a heavy price for being racist in South Africa”.
The strengthening of laws and the prosecution of offenders are critical in this fight. Making racism painful may not even need litigation, as Catzavelos discovered. Within 24 hours of his outburst going viral, he had been banned from the school his children attend, disowned by own his family and his wife’s employer, and he lost his job and had contracts terminated.
The kind of activism we saw this week – while it could easily morph into mob justice and trial by social media – is the kind of response we need if we are to rid our country of this scourge.
Let us make racists outcasts in society, and let’s make the practice of racism a prohibitively expensive one.
