Reitzhuis and Parktown Boys High: a case study in anti-Afrikaner bias

Possibly it’s because I hail from humble origins, but I’ve always been pretty skeptical about private schools. As one wag put it: Private schools are the cream of society – thick, rich and full of clots.

Although Parktown Boys High is admittedly not a private school, its fees are high and it is situated in the wealthy northern suburbs of Johannesburg. Possibly because of its liberal constituency, Parktown Boys was the first public school to admit non-whites in 1991. As the Wikipedia entry for the school gushes: “This was a bold step and can be attributed to the free thinking management which is passed down to the school boys.”

Pity that its so-called free-thinking and liberal management does not extend to curtailing its barbaric initiation practices, which include stripping people naked and beating them with cricket bats and clubs, one might add.

What is of particular interest to me is the reaction of the press, many of the old boys and parents to the arrest of those responsible for the brutal initiations at Parktown Boys in 2009, and the contrast to the Reitzhuis incident in 2008, as well as other incidents of initiation at Afrikaans-speaking schools and university residences.

For those who don’t remember, the Reitzhuis incident involved students at a University of the Free State residence filming black cleaners eating food, as part of a mock initiation ceremony, which had ostensibly been “urinated” on as part of a prank video aimed at satirizing the ANC regime’s obsession with racist transformation (aka the ethnic cleansing of whites from institutions.) In reality, the “urine” at Reitzhuis was Oros, an orange cordial. At no stage were the cleaners physically harmed, in contrast to the brutal beatings with cricket bats that boys like Pene Kimber’s son suffered.

Ms Kimber said during a TV interview that her son’s buttocks were covered in black bruises after the incident. In stark contrast, none of the Reitzhuis “victims” even thought of complaining, simply because they hadn’t been harmed. It was a black student who was not involved who stumbled across the video and whose complaint started the storm of controversy.

Possibly because the students at Reitzhuis were Afrikaners and their unhurt (and I want to emphasize: UNHURT) “victims” black, however, there was an orgy of condemnation from all and sundry, including the international press. The left and their sycophantic media had a field day by hysterically and in unison screaming “racism.” The ANC regime promptly instituted a commission of inquiry, which predictably concluded that all universities were infested by unrepentant white racists. Jonathan Jansen, an unapologetic critic and even hater of Afrikaners, was made rector of the university, possibly to teach those Afrikaner “racists” a lesson.

The students involved were also criminally charged, presumably by the institution itself.

Fast forward from February 2008 to February 2009. During a similar incident, this time at an upper class English-speaking academic institution (Reitzhuis was Afrikaans-speaking), the black head boy, Kaizer Tabane, of Parktown Boys was one of the ring leaders of the attacks on Ms Kimber’s white son and other victims. He was admittedly later stripped of his responsibilities but remained in the school. The students at Reitzhuis were expelled.

As far as I could ascertain, however, very few people viewed the Parktown attacks as a racial incident. There were no headlines in the New York Times calling Tabane a racist. This is illogical in the light of the Reitzhuis outcry, given that the ringleader at Parktown Boys, the head boy, Kaizer Tabane, was black, and his victims included whites. If white students at Reitzhuis play a prank on black cleaners without hurting them, it's racism. If a black headboy leads a vicious attack that leaves white people black and blue, it's not racism. Somebody should explain this to me someday.

The reaction and hypocrisy of the headmaster and some of the parents at Parktown Boys are also noteworthy. Whereas almost all callers to radio talk shows in the aftermath of the Reitzhuis video were unanimous in their shrill condemnation, many of the parents and old boys of Parktown Boys seem to want this incident kept silent. Many of them, in anonymous press interviews and calls to radio stations, want this incident to be handled “internally” (read: “swept under the carpet.”) The headmaster shows all the signs of somebody who desires a swift cover-up, accusing the press of bias against him. The parents of the miscreants at Parktown Boys want the charges withdrawn.

Note the important difference: the school was not the party that laid criminal charges. It was the mother of one of the victims.

Once again: when white, Afrikaans students play a prank in which nobody is physically harmed, it’s “racism” and it reaches the front pages of the international press. They are expelled from the institution and criminally charged by that institution.

When a black is a ringleader of a brutal attack on white victims at an English-speaking school, on the other hand, the headmaster and parents want it covered up and handled internally and the New York Times is strangely silent about the matter. No criminal charges are brought by the institution itself.

Call me excessively Afrikaans, but this reeks of the utmost hypocrisy and bias against Afrikaners and whites in general, perpetrated as usual by the idiotic English-speaking left-wing liberal.