The social media went abuzz over the weekend after a videoclip was posted of a black South African tourist who was pushed down a flight of stairs by the host at an Airbnb overnight facility in Amsterdam. Zanele Muholi, a photographer, posted the videoclip on her Instagram page and claimed that the man was angry because they checked out “a few minutes late” and, as was to be expected, she starting screaming : “Racism” at the top of her voice on the social media.
What’s new? We know this tactic in South Africa all too well by now. Bad behaviour from a black person, objection to it by a white person…voila! Racism!!!!
That the host reacted rather harshly cannot be denied, but fact of the matter is that Zanele already lied when she claimed “…a few minutes late…”. 90 Minutes is an hour and a half and means, in the hospitality industry, a huge inconvenience to a host who has to prepare the room for the next arrival.
If disrespect towards the customs and culture of other people can be called “racism”, then Zanele Muholi was the racist in this case. And if that host was indeed racist, he would not have approved of her staying at his facility in the first place. Yet he did, and then had to deal with the bad manners she brought along.
Amsterdam is a Western European city in a country where punctuality and time keeping is good manners. In South Africa we are used to the disrespect of the black person for the white, coloured and Indian population by forcing their own concept of timekeeping on us all day in and day out. We even coined the well-known phrase: “Africa-time” for it. Of the loss of time and income in the business sector, of the work that doesn’t get done, of the inconvenience and offense it causes us when the black South African does not respect our sense of punctuality and time-value by showing up late for meetings (or never showing up at all), we hardly ever speak. There is no sense in objecting to it any way, we’ve accepted long ago that the different approach to time-keeping is just another irreconcilable difference causing the failure of the multiculturalist South Africa.
But in Amsterdam nobody needs to swallow that bollocks! When you are in another country, you accept their customs and their rules and you stick to it, or they throw you out. If a black South African wants to enjoy the favours of Amsterdam, don’t go and impose your own rules and own habits on your hosts, for they don’t need to put up with it.
And it won’t help you to start screaming “racism” at the top of your voice, because in Europe disrespect for the customs of your host country will be acted upon, whether you are black or white.
In short therefore, Zanele wasn’t thrown out and pushed down a stairway because she was black. She was thrown out because where she comes from she is used to forcing her own value system down the throats of her countrymen and getting away with it. And then she tried to do the same in another country. She disrespected the high value which the Dutch culture puts on punctuality, she offended her host and belittled what he holds in high regard. And therefore SHE was the racist.
Read the original article by Daniel Lötter on Front Nasionaal SA – blad
