Atlantean that was damned funny, the second part well obviously the "racists" have found a reason to.
Why else would they carry on about it?
You guys should come an live in South Africa for say 6 months, just be warned it may take you the rest of your life to be able to stop being racist.
I've met Scandinavians fresh off the plane they were definitely not racist (knew black people were different but that's about it), then something happens to them, they shrug it off, then something else happens, then ... eventually they cant take it any more and suddenly they realize why some people are racist (and why they too are of a different opinion)
And I can honestly say that in South Africa the vast majority
of black people aren't racist (hey they don't like white people, or Indians for that matter but that's another story) their discrimination is Xenophobia, in other words they do not like other black people from other countries.
Just last week an Angolan refugee was killed by our local black population, then there was retaliation, and a local black was killed, a Zairean (from DRC) and another Angolan were killed.
There are some Namibian's (our northern neighbour) living in tents supplied by the defence force because guess what our locals were trying to kill them about a year ago, they are still there today (saw them).
These poor bastards (foreign blacks) really get it hard from our locals who accuse them of stealing the local's woman, government houses, jobs, etc. I swear the locals have told me this personally (I used to drive deliveries, and they would come along to help carry stuff).
When we had the international Racism Conference in Durban last year (Israel & the USA walked out) our locals were having fun of course, but the foreign blacks (from the USA - carrying on about slavery) weren't too happy with the locals and vice versa, comments along the lines of: "You're not African" weren't taken too well by some of the "African American" delegates.
Many of the delegates of all races were angry that "The Untouchables" (Indian lowest caste) were making a nuisance of themselves - going were they weren't supposed to, doing what they weren't supposed to, upsetting things, etc
Now if a white person had said that especially outside of the conference, there would have been cries of racism. Racism truly is in the eye of the beholder.
The current situation / thinking in South AFrica is that only white people can be racist. For instance a black person can walk up to me on the street and tell me "Go to H** you F***ing White bastard", and not be racist, if I were to reply to him "No, you go to H*** you F***ing Black bastard" I would most likely be labelled a racist.
Furthermore discrimination is illegal in South Africa which is hell if someone is fired / not promoted / not hired they can say it was because they were discriminated against (unless you are white especially a white man - "pale male" for short) and take the company to labour court, the company pretty much has to then prove that it's decision was not based on gender / religion / race / ethnicity / sexual orientation / political affiliation (the list has more).
If however you are the afore mentioned pale male fear not (unless you're gay perhaps) the law has a disclaimer exempting discrimination against you for being a pale male from being illegal, ie it is perfectly legal to discriminate against the pale male.
The government has set quotas in sport, there shall be so many players of colour / black players in the cricket team and so many in the rugby team. Although the seem to have retreated on the cricket side recently after we kept losing in Australia, suddenly we are winning again now that teams are back to merit based selection.
Senior certificate / matric marks have in the past been adjusted upwards if you are of a certain language group, a euphemism for being black and speaking one of the 9 of the eleven official languages which qualify.
If you are black you are deemed to have come from a previously disadvantaged background (well seven years ago at least) so you can get into university with a lower set of entrance requirements than a "certain other group".
Once you get out of University there is "Employment Equity" previously known as "Affirmative Action" which quickly aquired a bad name, which states if there are two applicants of equal (near equal) merit, then the black / previously disadvantaged one must be given the job. The reasoning is that he made it through a tougher time / circumstances and is still equal therefore he must be better.
However this lucky guy has has already been helped when leaving school & at university time, the fact that he now has a degree apparently doesn't seem to mean that he is no longer disadvantaged but advantaged. On a winning wicket which continues...
Government has also set ratios which companies must meet, ie XX% of top / middle management must be black, X% disabled, XX% female (as well as lower down the corporate structure).
The government also award contracts to "black empowerment" companies ie black owned / controlled. For some reason the get very upset when they find out the most of the companies are formed by white people who employ black people to get these contracts.
They seem to be most indignant that certain well educated blacks have set up their own companies, and have a business plan which states: We are going to bid on and win government contracts and then pass these contracts onto white companies, who will actually fulfil the contract terms, for a fee.
And lately there have been moves to change the ownership of white owned companies by declaring that 25% (methinks) of companies of a certain size must be black owned, of course they could just buy this percentage on the open market, but that would cost money so in the end a chunk of the company gets given away - the price of doing business with the government.
And you wonder why there are so many South Africans (Yes that Doctor / engineer / IT guy / pilot / accountant / etc with the funny accent good quite possibly be South African) are in your country, your gain our loss.
Then there is the Africa syndrome where countries running well before independence, slowly start to crumble - ie become more corrupt, less GDP growth, greater inflation, higher unemployment, greater borrowing (which they then want written off - hey its your tax dollars not theirs), civil war eg Mozambique (finished a couple of years ago after 20 years of civil war following the Portuguese pull out), Angola still going (again Portuguese pulled out), Zaire / DRC after Belgium pulled out, Sierra Leone after independence from Britain, Rwanda, Somalia, Ethiopia & Eritrea. A little snafu in Lesotho were SA went in double quick. A little war in the Caprivi strip (Namibia) about 3 years back fighting over a town called Catimo mulilo, which I went through about 2 weeks before they started fighting over it - it is a most definitely a dump, its basically a tiny village with one store, one garage and that's basically it.
And Zimbabwe, which has finally started reaching a point where the outside powers can no longer ignore what's has been happening there, for a great many years (Mugabe has been president for about 20 year now) watch CNN for scant details.
The AIDS pandemic (its bigger than an epidemic) is largely being ignored by our now black government, President Thabo Mbeki for some reason "I do not understand how a virus can cause a syndrome" largely ignores this and argues against treatment with medical research that he does on the internet. There have been suggestions that if there was still a white government in power with this attitude to the crises it would be considered genocide.
Apparently one of the reasons why the government does not want to give anti retrovirals to HIV+ pregnant women (to prevent mother to child transmission of HIV) is this that this would increase the number of AIDS orphans (ie the mother still dies of AIDS but the baby doesn't get the virus because of the treatment). I have heard this statement more than once.
And the sad thing is that there really aren't enough people willing & able to adopt them (hey there are only so many white people - less than 10% of the population.)
Anyone who questions the current state of affairs is dimissed as a racist who is against reconciliation.
Please don't complain to me about racists, some people have very good reasons far better than mine.
By the way, all of this iritates me sometimes, that's when I'm racist, the rest of the time that's when I feel sorry for them - that's when I'm not racist.
Ah well at least the weather is nice.
And if you don't believe something / anything that I've said come and live here for 6 months or a year, the truth will unveil itself.