A dash of media with some politics

International headlines read “Racial Tensions Flare”, they are right, tensions are at quite a high but whether or not racial is the best term to describe it is questionable.

There is an abundance of racial remarks and references to disloyalty among black people and more particularly the “black elite” being flung around in our media. Some of it, or perhaps even most of it is in defence of possibly shady politicians. The defence of these politicians by thought leaders such as Eric Miyeni against the likes of Ferial Haffajee is not where the problem lies. There seems to be a growing phenomenon in this country to confuse freedom of speech with hate speech. Politicians and media alike have lost any sense of respect or fair interaction. Insults of a sexist and racial nature are hurled ad infinitum. There are just no boundaries.

The sad thing is that even if there is any validity in the thoughts being published, uttered or murmured, its completely drowned out by the noise that are the remarks of Julius in reference to Lindiwe Mazibuko, about being “a tea girl of the madam” because she had been seen with the white opposition once too often. Rhetoric about being “a black snake in the grass” and being “necklaced” by Miyeni in reference to Haffajee because she dared to be persistent in her attempt to hold Malema to account for any illegalities he may be involved in. This noise shouts loudly in the direction of hate speech.

In all of this back and forth concerning black capitalism and how it is obtained, there may be some compelling points if we could just get past using our blackness as the rationale behind every probing article. Maybe we could actually recognise traitors for what they truly are, if we stopped finding them in rightfully enquiring minds.