Choosing to hate and discriminate eventually turns into everybody against everyone

Dear DM168 readers,

Actor and anti-racism activist Marlon Brando is believed to have said that, “if Hitler had killed all Jews, Black people and Orientals, and was left with nothing but pure, blue-eyed, Aryan types, he’d have started killing the left-handed, or those with crooked teeth”.

This paragraph is from the poetry column by Rethabile Masilo on page 47 of this week’s DM168. In his article, Masilo looks at the ill-treatment of minorities, and particularly gay people, as he explains that the idea of homosexuality being “un-African” is a lie. He delves deep into humanity’s propensity to discriminate against those who are different and he wonders at what point exactly this discrimination will stop.

He added later via email: “In 1981, when I was jailed in Springs [Joburg] for pass laws (I did have my Lesotho passport, duly stamped with everything in order), I agreed with myself that the only and sole reason I was jailed (with mom, sister and cousin) was because the activity of the melanocytes in our dermis was too high. That blew me away, and that’s when I began to inspect racism and bigotry, and the phenomenon of ‘us’ against ‘them’. If we allowed it, this would eventually turn into everybody against everyone. Among whatever group of beings, there are marked differences. Hair texture, eye colour, nose shape, handedness, and so on. Why choose some, like skin colour, only?”

The point he’s making is a simple one: If you choose to discriminate against people for any reason, is there ever a limit you reach on discrimination? In other words, does the discrimination ever stop?

Masilo’s story struck a chord because I’ve been trying to understand why there was a small backlash against Pride merchandise at Woolies, and why the teeny-­tiny Al Jama-ah party decided to attack the LGBTQI+ community with confusing, self-contradictory statements – the spokesperson sounds like a rabid homophobe, but the Joburg mayor, who’s a member of the party, has no problem with gay people.

Of course, we know that hate, conspiracies and the ability to make people feel outraged cause the virality that public figures crave. And they don’t care about the human cost or the fact that there has been an increase in hate crimes around the world.

But I couldn’t spend too much time thinking about it because this week was the anniversary of the release of the Zondo Report on State Capture. Our resident Zondo Commission expert, Ferial Haffajee, shows in our lead story that there has indeed been progress on the State Capture prosecution front. But, worryingly, we must now turn our attention to the issue of State Capture 2.0.

Babita Deokaran made the ultimate sacrifice to expose the ruthless tender mafias that steal hundreds of millions of rands through intricate procurement networks at the Gauteng Department of Health. André de Ruyter has also put himself at great risk to show us how Eskom loses R1-billion a month to ­corruption. 

Inflicting a million cuts to bleed us dry

This story first appeared in our weekly Daily Maverick 168 newspaper, which is available countrywide for R29.