The latest hysterical attack about alleged racism, is based on an Outsurance TV ad. The controversial advert shows several collated video scenes where men – purportedly fathers, who are mostly white – do a myriad positive activities with their children to celebrate Sunday’s Father’s Day.
The video advert was captioned: “Happy #FathersDay to all amazing dads out there.” Immediately a storm broke loose on the social media because the people featured in the ad were mostly white with only one black father and child featured. Statements on Twitter included: Pholoho Selebano: “@OUTsurance first you raised R250 000 for Knysna fires, but have never donated to the shack fire victims. Now an anti-Black fathers day ad (sic).” Other Twitter users blatantly stated that Outsurance implied that only white men can be good fathers. This is, of course, in itself a preposterous and utterly racist statement.
A few days ago I took part in a conversation where a number of journalists, communications experts and linguists were present and we discussed the topic: “The inability of South Africans to distinguish between fact and opinion.” Any English language teacher will testify to the extreme difficulty pupils and students in Further Education have to understand these two concepts, in particular those who are mother tongue speakers of African languages and those from poorer and socially less advantaged backgrounds. This inability manifests itself more and more amongst Afrikaans and English speakers as well, probably because we use increasingly less face to face communication, and rely more and more on social media. We also read a lot less than in the past, which influences our ability to grasp linguistic features. People struggle with concepts like irony, satire, sarcasm, direct and indirect speech, implicit and explicit expression – and to a large extent with fact and opinion.
And that is dangerous state of affairs in a country such as South Africa where laws are being prepared, as we speak, to criminalise any form of racism and hate speech, which are, in itself, difficult concepts to define.
The Outsurance-incident is a prime example of where an innocent Father’s Day advertisement was interpreted (thus “opinion based” rather than fact based) and branded as racist. And even the relief aid to Knysna was dragged in! As a consequence the Head of Marketing at Outsurance, Peter Cronjé, immediately apologised for the ad and said that it was not representative of the demographics of the country and was issued by a junior staff member. The ad was removed and Cronje emphasized that the Outsarance contribution to Knysna went, mostly, to the black community. Why? Did the fire in Knysna even take into account the race of house owner when it consumed the property?
The question arose: Does Outsurance deserve a boycott similar to that of Spur for the handling of this situation? In my opinion, no. Cronje admitted that the company might have been wrong in using 99% white actors in the ad and it was withdrawn. Whether it was right or wrong to use an ad like that is, once again, an issue of fact or opinion. Spur refuses to admit that they were wrong to this day. That is a fact, not an opinion. So at most one could really condemn Outsurance for apologising to people who reacted based on opinions, stating those as facts, and saddling the “racism” horse again. Cronje should actually not even have bothered, because his white clientele in this country have learned by now that, irrespective of what they do or say, it will be branded somehow as racist and the accusation will be based on the black opinion of what racism is.
It is always safe to respond to facts. Response to opinions should be determined by the question: “Is it even worth the effort to respond to this?”
99% of the social media storms caused by opinionated black South Africans who scream “Racism! Racism!” at anybody and everybody, is not even worth an acknowledgement, much less a response.
Read the original article by Daniel Lötter on Front Nasionaal SA – blad
South Africa Today – South Africa News
