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Johannesburg - It's been a tumultuous week in South Africa as racism has reared its ugly head. In the first week of January, each day seemed to be filled with the mob of social media outing more and more people on claims of racist behaviour.
Estate agent, Penny Sparrow referred to black people as monkeys. Justin van Vuuren, a fitness instructor told black people to 'go back to where you come from,' and Gareth Cliff was called out for his comments on freedom of speech.
Gareth trended for over 24 hours and M-Net has since confirmed that amidst calls to boycott Idols, it would be reviewing Gareth's future employment with the show.
On Thursday Gareth wrote an open blog post, appealing for constructive engagement on the issue. And as an eye-opening week comes to an end, Gareth on Friday invited DJ Fresh and advocate Dali Mpofu into his studios on CliffCentral to an open discussion.
Here are some extracts. But for the full debate, listen to the podcast here.
"The first thing is to accept it. If you don't go past that stage, you'll never move past it," said Dali.
After Penny Sparrow initially made the comment, she insisted that she was not a racist and said her comments were not meant to be hurtful.
"Whose responsibility is it to get white folk to come to the table and be part of building this nation. I follow 25 000 people and Twitter and my timeline is busy all the time. And generally, black folk are feeling like white folk have never almost felt like they have a responsibility to do more than just keep riding on this train. (sic) What are you doing to say 'I'm part of building. Yes, I'm privileged but I'm part of building' Until you understand that the majority of people 'I still don't have running water. I still use a bucket to go to the toilet," said Fresh.
Gareth posed hard questions to both Fresh and Dali and trust us, the data is worth it.
