Comedian Gola gets called ‘monkey’ at trendy Cape Town bar

Comedian and television personality Lazola Gola took to Facebook to describe a racial incident that occurred at trendy Capetonian bar and bistro, The Power and the Glory.

Gola says he was called a monkey by one of the bar’s patrons.

WARNING: The Facebook post features strong language

UPDATE: Gola has since taken to Facebook to identify the person who called him a monkey as a News24 web developer called Mark Chippy. We have messaged Chippy in an attempt to get his comment on the allegations, he has not yet responded. 

The Citizen spoke to Gola, who told us the slur was uttered by a man who had been harassing him and a friend. The man was eventually escorted from the bar, at which point he uttered the slur.

He says the bouncers of the bar were far more concerned with his anger caused by the offensive words than the words themselves.

“I was having some drinks with my mate, who is white, and catching up. I went to the bar to get a drink, when I returned there was a guy sitting in my seat.”

“I told him, and he reacted by literally dragging a seat from somewhere else and shoving it in front of me.”

After Gola didn’t accept this, the man “eventually got up and went to go sit in the seat he dragged.”

Gola says a little while later, the man came to sit at his table uninvited. Only Gola and his friend were at the table.

According to Gola, the man turned to the comedian’s white friend and asked “is this the BEE table?”

The man apparently kept coming back to the table, coming close to Gola’s face and making him and his friend uncomfortable, making “weird, snide comments” and displaying other forms of “passive aggressive” behaviour.

READ MORE: Sasha Martinengo stands by his ‘monkey’ comment about Malema

The patron’s behaviour led to him being escorted out the bar’s outside street section according to Gola, at which point he called the comedian a “monkey”.

This angered Gola, which led to the bouncers holding him back and manhandling him.

The man was now sitting at the outside section of the bar on the street where patrons from the bar enjoy drinks. According to Gola, he “sat behind us drinking his drink and pointing and laughing at me” while the bar’s security were accosting him.

Gola was eventually told to leave, and was initially not let back in to get his laptop and drinks which were still inside the venue, eventually managing to do so despite the bouncers telling him not to.

The comedian feels this is an incident that saw the victim being handled more harshly than the perpetrator.

READ MORE: Equality Court makes it clear: No racism is acceptable

“I tried to explain that the easiest way to calm me down is to not let racists here say that kind of thing,” he said.

“I was the victim. I feel staff need to be sensitive to these situations, you’ve had 24 years to train for this kind of thing.”

He also said that other patrons at the bar were passive throughout the incident, with some telling him he was overreacting, although there was a show of solidarity from one white woman who approached him after the incident was over.

The bar’s manager, Sabine Gelle, agreed with Gola that the issue was mishandled by the establishment’s security and said they would be doing everything they could to make sure it never happened again.

Gelle, who was not present when the incident took place, said she “woke up this morning only to find all the comments on Facebook”.

“Our security staff mishandled everything,” she said, adding that they “were not being very level-headed”.

READ MORE: KFC manager fired for racism after calling staff ‘a bunch of monkeys’

“It’s so upsetting to hear how it was so terribly dealt with,” she continued.

Gelle said she had been trying to get hold of Gola but had not reached him yet.

“Besides reputation management on Facebook the most important thing for us was to reach out to him,” she says.

“On a management side we will try everything in our power to make sure racist issues are properly dealt with in future,” she continued.

She added that they would apologise to Gola and make sure the man who uttered the slur would be banned for life.

Gelle said the security would undergo internal processes to ensure an incident like this didn’t happen again.

“We are all affected by poor decisions made by people who are unfortunately representing us,” she said.

Gelle said the issue reflected poorly on the attempts of Capetonian venue owners to create a racially inclusive environment, saying the issue was a sign the city took “two steps forward and one step back”.

This article was updated to include the name of the man who is accused of using the slur: 3:14, November 29. 

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