Three grumpy old men have a disagreement, one of them happens to be black.
Depending on the lens through which you see the world (your own personal experiences, background and culture) we all quickly assume a lot of things.
Many of which are nowhere close to the truth. But that does not matter because we have already acted as judge and jury.
We have decided who was at fault and who deserves our sympathy. In essence we create our own truth. It gets a life of its own and runs amok like a streaker on a rugby field.
In the case of former Springbok Ashwin Willemse walking out on live TV it took about two ticks for minister of sport and recreation Tokozile Xasa to make up her mind and call for the suspension of SuperSport analysts Nick Mallett and Naas Botha.
The African National Congress (ANC) in the Western Cape quickly followed suit with a touching lament on how Willemse stood for downtrodden black people everywhere.
All this before the ball had had a chance to go into touch. No one knew the context of the argument or whether Mallett and Botha had done anything to provoke their colleague. Was it a misunderstanding? Or a personal conflict outside of the race equation?
Or were they in fact guilty as sin? We will probably never know, but I have read a million opinions on the matter.
You would think half the people arguing on Facebook had been in the studio at the time.
Well done at least to Parliament’s Sports Committee for calling on South Africans not to speculate until all sides of the story have been made public. Anyway it looks like the trio will be back in studio this weekend. SuperSport apparently met with the three presenters on Monday in an effort to get to the bottom of it all, and despite having very little to say about that, have announced that they see no reason to pull any of the analysts off the air.
Another race storm in a teacup perhaps? Yet for me it does bring to the fore the lack of legitimacy of the entire quota system. Nobody wants to spend their entire professional career justifying their presence in the South African team and beyond. That I believe is the curse of the quota system. Even if a black player would have earned his stripes without the quota, he is forever undermined by its presence.
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On the other side of the world #BlackExcellence was trending at the royal wedding and it was the black preacher who all but stole the limelight from the lovely Meghan Markle and her prince charming. Minister Michael Curry quoted Martin Luther King, Jr. and referenced a hymnal sung by slaves in the antebellum South to talk about the power of love to change the world.
His passionate sermon, delivered in that colourful African American style, I think was one of the biggest surprises of the day. Everyone was expecting a stuffy preach to be endured and instead they got taken to church – in a big way.
“When love is the way, unselfish, sacrificial, redemptive, when love is the way, then no child will go to bed hungry in this world ever again. When love is the way, we will let justice roll down like a mighty stream and righteousness like an ever-flowing brook. When love is the way, poverty will become history.
“When love is the way, the Earth will be a sanctuary. When love is the way, we will lay down our swords and shields, down by the riverside, to study war no more. When love is the way, there’s plenty good room, plenty good room, for all of God’s children because when love is the way, we actually treat each other well, like we are actually family.”
We could take a note or two from Curry’s book here in SA and start by laying down the race card and taking hold of each other’s hands instead. As the old Sunday School song put it, red, brown, yellow, black and white, we are all precious in His sight.
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It was lovely to see how excited everyone got about the British nuptials, dressing up in their finest and drinking tea on Saturday in front of the telly. I have included a few photos of local celebrations of the big day.
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