Quick Update (and *poof!* explosion)

Updates on the madness in Harfield Village (for those interested):

1. Most of us who were pleading for the eradication of racial profiling & for less viciousness among community members were booted from the Harfield Village Association page on Facebook, after there was an enormous outcry against all the sneaky racism finding its way to our page. Some of us are paying members, so we’ll be giving them a bit of grief later.

We’ve been accused of conspiracy & ‘baiting’ them. I’d love to know how one can be baited into saying racist things. It’s a puzzler.

2. A tongue-in-cheek page was started for all the banned members: Harfield Village Youth League. We’ve already arranged a craft market. Oh yeah.

3. Esteemed journalist, Tanya Farber, also a resident of the area, wrote a short piece in the Sunday Times as part of a disturbing package of articles also focussed on the incredible prevalence of race-related crimes happening in middle-class neighbourhoods here in Cape Town. Find it here: Growing discomfort with neighbourhood watches ‘racial profiles’.

4. Fellow resident, Rumbi (not sure if I’m allowed to post her surname, because only her first is listed on the blog) wrote this fan-fucking-tastic article on her blog: On Silence & Human Limits.

5. Cape Talk hosted a segment on this issue on its morning show, interviewing William bird – director of Media Monitoring Africa, who essentially said this:

“The best way of dealing with a racist is to out them publicly, show that their logic is irrational and fundamentally unsound. It’s the most clear thing you can do. You have to have those debates, and you have to have them uncomfortably in your community.”

Find the segment here (it was a great piece – and short, too – so check it out!): Neighbourhood Groups & Racial Profiling. 

5. I’ve spoken with the head of the HVA who is a very nice chap and pretty gatvol of the bleak world he lives in.

6. I ate my weight in red velvet cake immediately after recovering from food poisoning. I don’t mess around when it comes to cake.

Oh, and something not directly related to the incidents in Harfield, but oh-so-bloody relevant, Marianne Thamm’s article in the Daily Maverick – Cape Town racist club assault: The tragedy & danger of an ahistorical upbringing.