Tuesday, March 11, 2008

Black White And General SA Mentalness

When I was younger we’d play that game “Yes No Black White” where one person tried their best to make the other folk say one of those four words.

The other folk learnt new ways to express themselves and to get their answer across. It makes you think what you really mean, what are you really trying to say, instead of sticking to generic “yay” or “nay”s.

Right now, maybe just for a month [Media ESPECIALLY] I’d love the whole of big old S.A. to play that game. Forget the “yes” or “no”, but with the words “Black” and “White”. I’d add “Race” or any of those derivatives to it too.

I would LOVE it. Not having to see those words in a single media story for one month.

Each time I see a comment saying, “Why does it all have to be ‘black’ or ‘white’? When is it going to be ‘South Africans’ and ‘South Africans’?” I want to FONT it up to size 72 and bold it. Maybe forward it to others. Send it on newsreels at the bottom of tv screens. Smoke it across the sky.

Just for a month.

No “Black” or “White” or “Race” or “Racist”.

Perhaps after a short break, some of us would realise we were not actually trying to highlight the plight of a person based on their race, but based on other “hidden” characteristics.

Maybe not. But at least I’d be able to see this then.

And while I’m at South Africa’s 2008 mental chaos… here are some most delightful videos of S.o.u.t.h. A.f.r.i.c.a.n.s. all being bullied in what looks to me like a completely over-the-top cop exercise.

(Actually, it looks to me that the cops had just realised during a coke rush that they’d run out of the good old white stuff and suddenly realised they’d best mission to get some before their highs lowered….)

I realise us old Maties are a rowdy silly bunch, and the odd fist has been known to have been pulled after a few too many brandewyns-en-cokes, but RIOT GEAR? For a drug raid?

And, well, just general mistreatment of students – to the point of throwing a girl across a room (watch the CCTV footage), throwing about a boy after he has been pepper sprayed in the eyes, kicking kids in the head, bursting a student’s eardrum when he was asking for your badge number and you were trying to get his phone-photos deleted. Shooting into the ceiling of a club. And on and on the stories go. AND ALL oh-so-nicely captured on CCTV! HA! HAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHA!

Hey? Cops? I have some faith left in you… especially as you treated me incredibly during my own student days…. Whatthefuck were you thinking and doing here?

When did drunken partying students become a small terrorist army to defeat?

Inside Bohemia

DIE BURGER interviewing students that night

Two guys being harassed AFTER they were pepper sprayed

A girl being harassed by the cops:
Part 1 & Part 2 (Where she is thrown)

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