Let Them Drink Pee! – A study in comparative applied racism

Remember when four kids at the University of the Free State set off a racism storm with a video in which they pretended to urinate on a steak and compelled the cleaning ladies to eat it.

It was later indicated that the dudes used pedestrian camera tricks, a squeezy bottle and Oros.

Sure, that doesn’t justify the act at all. Make no mistake.

Sure, I’d still rather eat steak drenched in pretend wee flavoured Oros than life threatening e-coli or typhoid infested water.

The thing is, however, that should never ever even have to be an option.

It seems our water authorities have taken a different approach.

What’s weird is that celebrations abound when the standards compliance rises above a certain level.

Like Nelson Mandela Bay issues a statement saying that the crisis is resolved because 70% of samples are compliant?

Uhm… Okay. We’re not exactly trying to pass matric here.

We’re trying to make sure people don’t get ill from poor quality water.

I know that section 27 of our Constitution only offers us a right to access to water and no mention is made that it needs to be clean, but goodness gracious! Apply a little thought to it!

Now, were anybody to make a video compelling a poor black person to consume faeces of any kind, that is deplorable. Take away the video and it is still deplorable.

Why then, is it seemingly okay for an entire governmental institution, with national support and a history of delivering fine drinking water to its people, to get away with suddenly feeding us subpar water?

Also Read: DA calls on Nelson Mandela Bay to stop using water from ‘nearly empty’ Kouga Dam

Worse off, if you’re reading this online, you would statistically have the means to purchase bottled water, or at least boil that which you get out of your tap.

Why you should have to boil it in the first place, I’ll leave to the Eskom conspiracy theorists.

Those who were relying on the water as it came out of the faucet, you know, desperately poor people, you know, a bulk of our population; it is they who bear the brunt of this horrific lapse in services.

Perhaps it won’t be regarded as racism, given who is in charge of the water and we know, that apparently despite many anecdotal stories we all hear of rich versus poor conflicts within race groups, that sort of racism doesn’t exist.

Maybe we just don’t call it racism but is it any less deplorable?

“Let them eat cake” might not have ignited the French Revolution and it might not ever have been said. It certainly triggers though.

In South Africa, we could probably have the Minister of Water and Sanitation literally gazette, “Let them drink piss” and I have my doubts that anybody would raise an eyebrow.

Probably because hardly anybody reads the gazettes, but also because the quality of our drinking water just doesn’t seem to matter.

If it did, we’d demand a standard of 100% compliance and not defer to the Department of Basic Education’s philosophy of 33% being a pass, or whatever ridiculous notion it is today.

So here’s the question. Why do we get so riled up when a white dude pretends to pee on a poor black lady’s steak?

Because it’s demeaning, horrendous and as an action, barbaric… Oh and racist, lest we forget.

But that’s not the real question. The real question is why don’t we get as riled up when our elected leadership finds it cool that the water that the poorest of our poor drink is poorly treated, effectively making us drink actual pee.

It’s still demeaning, horrendous and as an action, barbaric.

Just because many will struggle to find the racism within it, does it make it okay? Or at least okayer?

It shouldn’t! What this situation should teach us is that we can stand up to injustices that go beyond racism.

It teaches us that the victims often tend to be the same people and it’s got less to do with race and more to do with the expendability of the poor, at least until the next election.