Actor and playwright Rajesh Gopie has been slammed for his racist criticism on social media of the violence that took place at the weekend soccer match at the Moses Mabhida Stadium in Durban.
On Saturday 18 people were injured and a security guard badly beaten when Kaizer Chiefs fans invaded the pitch, attacked people and destroyed property. The fans were angry that their team lost 2-0 to Free State Stars in the Nedbank Cup.
In a Facebook post that has since been deleted, Gopie called rioting Kaizer Chiefs fans as baboons who like to play soccer with human heads.
Director of the Democracy Development Programme, Rama Naidu says Gopie should be using such incidents to try and foster social unity and not racism. Gopie has deleted the post and apologised. But Naidu says Gopie’s comments cannot be tolerated.
“For me the concern is bigger than Rajesh Gopie’s comment. I mean it’s unfortunate that he would go to Facebook and say something like this, knowing the power of social media. But it does point to a deeper problem about what people are talking about in closed spaces and that we are not hearing it. His comment about baboons and Sparrow’s thing about monkeys are a symptom of a far great problem. I think the full might of the law must be exercised. In this case, with the stadium it was plain hooliganism. The moment you put a colour, ethic, racial issue on it, it changes the whole thing. It’s unforgivable, given the history of instances like this,” says Naidu.
Gopie has rejected being a racist.
