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The Magors of this world are an indicator of barely suppressed rage at black people

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Zukiswa Pikoli is a journalist and columnist at Daily Maverick and is part of the founding team of Maverick Citizen. Prior to Daily Maverick she worked as a communications and advocacy officer at Public Interest Law Centre SECTION27.

Racially deviant cases show that we can’t legislate our way out of racism – a fundamental societal shift in thinking is required.

I have tried as far as possible not to enter the messy, racially abhorrent arena that has been created by one Belinda Magor. However, a point contained in her rant sticks with me – her call for black women’s uteruses to be cut out so that they can stop giving birth to black men, who, she says, are rapists and murderers.

It is not lost on me where this sort of thinking stems from – the eugenics movement, which expounds the illegitimate theory of “racial improvement” and “planned breeding”.

Eugenics was particularly popularised in the US, with a policy passed in 1907 that would allow Indiana the right to sterilise ethnic minorities regarded as inferior, such as black, Latino and Native American people.

Then, of course, there is Adolf Hitler, who infamously declared that anyone not of the Aryan race, such as Jews and Gypsies, was inferior and that Germans had to do everything in their power to keep their gene pool clean, including the genocide of such people.  

Magor’s anger and violence turn to the black man. She calls black people subhuman, labelling them rapists, thieves and murderers in comparison to animals, which she says are beautiful and deserve love.

The question is why is her reaction targeted at black people and when did we sanction comparing humans to animals?

Magor’s rant came as I was covering a work event at the Johannesburg Holocaust and Genocide Centre, which is a place of memory and education that shows the depths to which our humanity can sink when people no longer see one another as people and as a result feel justified in pursuing the literal extermination of others.

In Germany, the Nazis dehumanised Jewish people by representing them as rats; in Rwanda the Hutus referred to the Tutsis as cockroaches; and in America proponents of slavery referred to black people as apes – all to justify violence against people perceived as less than human.


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It is also important to note that Magor’s vitriol is by no means exceptional. She is not the only one who holds these views – she just happened to be recorded and outed.  

Is criminalisation the only answer, though? Will a fine change Magor’s views about black people, or will it simply make her more cautious about sending out racist voice notes?

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What of the yet-to-be-exposed Magors? How will they be rehabilitated as they hide on the fringes of society?

Racially deviant cases like this show that we can’t legislate our way out of racism – a fundamental societal shift in thinking is required.

The Magors of this world are sadly an indicator of a barely repressed rage in the country that is directed towards black people, and I am not convinced that our state institutions are doing enough to quell it.

May we never live to see a South Africa that normalises such regressive ways of thinking that could lead to the human atrocities shown in the Johannesburg Holocaust and Genocide Centre. DM168

This story first appeared in our weekly Daily Maverick 168 newspaper, which is available countrywide for R25.

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Comments - Please in order to comment.

  • Hello There says:

    You say that Magor’s views are not exceptional; i.e., that they are common.
    How common are they?
    What evidence is there for the ubiquity of these views?

  • Ockert Fourie says:

    This is an isolated case of a person who is not well in the head.
    A true racist needs to change him or herself, no amount of laws or fines will stop it.
    I would also suggest you include the racism of the EFF against white people in your next article about racism.
    I would also venture to say that there is a deep rage and hatred in the average South African towards the ANC.

  • Bruce Sobey says:

    Your whole article is an example of the use of the Fallacy of Hasty Generalisation. You have used one single instance of someone, a nobody in this case, whose “lift does not appear to go to the top floor” to characterise a large number of (implicitly white) people. In doing this you foster more racial division and totally overlook the large numbers of people that are actively working in schools and elsewhere to assist the disadvantaged in this country.

  • Rod H MacLeod says:

    “May we never live to see a South Africa that normalises such regressive ways of thinking that could lead to the human atrocities shown in the Johannesburg Holocaust and Genocide Centre.”
    Take a little time, if you may, to review the public utterances, songs, and slogans of Mr Julius Malema, too voluminous to repeat on this limited comment block. Do this, please, and understand that he represents a significant church in this country, before you gloss over a radical white person’s view that has no substantiated resonance with the white community in this country. Do not allow your own hysteria about racism make you a racist yourself.

  • Ian McGill says:

    There are a lot of disillusioned white folks who can see the results of liberating South Africa. Let’s face facts, after nearly 30 years of ANC, the country finds itself in a mess and sliding deeper into chaos. So, scapegoating begins, yes, it’s those whiteys who are keeping us back, from reaching our potential. This attitude and of course the victim mentality has got us where we are. All BBEE laws are racist by the exclusion of poorly pigmented people. It’s no wonder some folks get a bit emotional.

  • Geoff Woodruff says:

    This is actually little more than an erroneous generalization of the white population of SA. If you look around you you will find that most people, black, colored, Indian and white get along fine with each other. Yes we are all different and come from diverse cultures but that doesn’t mean that we are all racists. To take the ranting of this, obviously unstable woman, and put us all in the same basket is nothing less than sensationalism in its worst form. Quite frankly, I’m disappointed that Maverick would even publish such a diatribe.

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