The Democratic Alliance Student Organisation (DASO) recently sent some South African blood boiling with their controversial poster of an interracial couple embracing. The tagline of the poster read: “In OUR future, you wouldn’t look twice.” On the face of it, the poster was likely intended to be a catchy way of presenting a future South Africa with significantly better race relations. Of course, in reality, it sparked off off-mark sensationalist headlines (such as Wonkie’s today!), wraths and furore from a variety of holier-than-thou groups.
Wonkie thought it would be useful to provide some in-depth analysis of the poster itself and the raft of nutty commentary that it has inspired.
First off, raise your hands if you had even heard of DASO before this poster incident. Right. Can you really blame DASO for wanting to steal the limelight, just for a moment, from Julius Malema and the ANCYL? After all, how is an organisation supposed to compete for support when the media is so biased against them. Something drastic had to be done.
Secondly, what better way to attract attention in South Africa than to tackle anything to do with race relations. It’s a guaranteed winner. Ironically, showing any semblance of harmony between races is probably set to spark off uncontrolled rage, particularly with the race groups concerned. And that, is exactly what happened.
Black South Africans with nothing better to do accused DASO of being a hypocritical white organisation positioning themselves as something they are clearly not. White South Africans with nothing better to do accused objectors of living in the past and not embracing a truly interracial South African future. Indian and Coloured South Africans were left wondering when provocative posters of Joey Rasdien and Riaad Moosa in a warm embrace were going to flood the streets, taking both race and gender relations to the next level for them.
Then came the inevitable commentary from religious zealots. Because such posters containing a male and female individual can only lead to one thing – evil, promiscuous sin – the likes of Theunis Botha of the Christian Democratic Party deemed the poster to be an escalation of immorality to the highest order.
From that point on the commentary just deteriorated completely into a comic mess. Why was a white man depicted with a black woman, and not a black man with white woman? Is DASO trying to say that black men are not good enough for white women? And why was the white man not blonde? Of course, they won’t look twice… they’ll look thrice – they don’t have any clothes on in public! The ANCYL didn’t come up with an equivalent poster because they don’t really believe we can have a truly multiracial society living in harmony. And did you notice how the black woman seemed to be so slim and had her hair straightened in that photo… ludicrous – it’s yet another representation that the black race has to conform to white standards of beauty. Unacceptable… blah, blah, blah.
Debate all you like, but the reality of the future is already playing out in South Africa. Visit popular malls in the evenings and over the weekends. School kids – the next generation, certainly don’t appear to care much about race. That this comes more from a place of indifference, rather than rebellion, leads Wonkie to believe that attitudes are going to go through a forced revolution sooner than parents can blink.
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Related Wonkie posts on race relations and racism in South Africa:
- Jimmy Manyi – racist comments
- Is Julius Malema a racist?
- Shoot the Boer cartoon and race relations
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