Johannesburg - Nhlanhla Lux Dlamini, the hero of Maponya Mall, spent last weekend in the cells. He emerged to announce he’d been communing with the ancestors, specifically Steve Biko, who’d been held there.
The only problem was that Biko was never held in Joburg. He was beaten to death in Gqeberha and driven naked in the back of a police Land Rover to Pretoria where he was officially pronounced dead.
Biko was not a xenophobe either.
Will Smith, once the iconic Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, left fresh prints all over his erstwhile friend Chris Rock’s face at the Oscars on Sunday night. Smith was apparently defending his wife, Jada Pinkett Smith’s, honour. The problem was he laughed at Rock’s joke first and then got up and gave him what we would call a PK.
Two incidents. Two different sides of the world. Two different interpretations of doing the right thing. Both wrong.
Dlamini won a lot of fans – across all sides of the divide: class, colour and creed, when he stood up against the mob that was going to burn down Maponya Mall last July when Duduzile Defarge was trying to burn down the country with her smartphone.
He was a real hero at a time we sorely needed heroes. He could have done so much. Instead, he has turned into a little combat-booted camo-clad thug, pulling a Kristallnacht on illegals in Johannesburg. It’s so bad, the fascist Teletubbies disowned him and his Operation Dudula tactics – even though they’ve been happy to target illegals with as much ease as they do shampoo bottles and fashion store mannikins.
Smith eventually apologised to Rock, via Twitter, but it’s all a little bit too little too late for the celebrity husband who was probably the best-known cuckold since Andrew Parker Bowles famously laid down his wife for his country (and Prince Charles).
Dlamini and Smith have cleaved the opinion of the commentariat. As usual, there is no room for nuance: men are either misogynists or protective patriarchs; foreigners are criminal predators of the vulnerable, South Africans are xenophobes. None of these assertions is entirely false, there’s enough truth for the mob to get riled up.
It could all have been so different.
Dlamini showed incredible leadership when he galvanised the defence of the vulnerable against the mob. Now he’s leading the mob. He could have been a force for good, a moral compass, instead he’s opening a Pandora’s box, popularising racial hatred and the kangaroo courts that will follow.
Smith could have struck a blow against GBV and the disrespect of women worldwide. Instead, he chose violence with an act that had nothing to do with his wife’s alopecia and everything to do with his ego. In the process, he put a target on the back (face) of every comedian who ever says anything someone takes offence with.
This was a bad week on many fronts. The only winners were the Oscars; many of us watched a tiny part of them for the first time in a long time – as the world continued to burn.