Nando’s has only one raison d’être: to make a profit. When supporting Gareth Cliff’s Burning Platform show threatens to reduce the volume of peri-peri chicken it sells, it’s obvious that the chicken must prevail.
The 2021 Municipal Elections are around the corner, so what has the South African media all abuzz? A kerfuffle about race, of course.
The media could be focused on the ruling party’s record of corruption and failing service delivery, or on the strategic implications of voting for small-party candidates, or on the local issues at the heart of these elections – water and electricity, roads, sewerage, housing, security, economic development.
But then we wouldn’t have time to be offended. Who cares about elections when presented with a golden opportunity to signal our personal virtue by jumping on the outrage bandwagon?
And outraged we certainly should be. After all, a white man challenged a black woman on a public platform, and that is just not on. Here she was, bringing her personal experience of racism to the debate, and the white guy – get this – told her that her experience is ‘completely anecdotal and unimportant’.
The white guy in question, of course, is none other than Gareth Cliff, host of the Burning Platform, ‘brought to you by Nando’s’. The black woman whose personal experience he dismissed was Mudzuli Rakhivhane, spokesperson for Mmusi Maimane’s One SA Movement. How dare he?
In response to the social media outrage, the show’s sponsor, Nando’s, announced that it would cancel the five-year deal it had with Cliff with immediate effect.
Cliff even talked over Rakhivhane. He did that after she talked over him, and he also did that to the other white guy on the show, but it is obviously racist and sexist when he does it to a black woman, as Nando’s correctly points out.
Besides, the other white guy – John Steenhuisen, leader of the Racist Alliance – just sat there with what he probably thought looked like a bemused smile on his face, when it clearly was a hateful smirk.
He might deny that The Incident had anything to do with him, but we all know the only reason he was there was to commit violence upon black bodies. It’s not like black people actually vote for his party.
White knight
I should caution against watching the whole episode in question, because that might leave you with the mistaken impression that it wasn’t as bad as all that. If you do, however, you can see that Rakhivhane really needed the suits of Nando’s to come to her defence. She couldn’t be trusted to speak for herself.
When Cliff said that her anecdotal experience was unimportant and irrelevant, she actually thanked him for saying so! This kind of submissive slave mentality is what we should be fighting against. We really shouldn’t allow black women to go on combative public platforms with white people if they’re going to thank their interviewers for being rude or dismissive.
When Cliff told Rakhivhane that her personal experience of racism was irrelevant in the context of municipal elections, he obviously meant to imply that racism didn’t matter at all. When Cliff told Rakhivhane that he wanted her to finish and explain her position, he clearly didn’t want her to finish, and I applaud Nando’s for picking up on his forked tongue.
Rakhivhane later hit back by pointing out that Steenhuisen’s account of the views of four people was anecdotal, and Cliff conceded that her point was well made. Having established that Cliff is a racist, however, we can only read his concession as passive-aggressive sarcasm.
In any case, Rakhivhane’s dig at Cliff over Steenhuisen’s alleged anecdote really was an example of the tu quoque fallacy, which just underlines how ill-equipped she was to stand up for herself on a public platform, and how much she needed a white knight to rescue her.
Being so poor at arguing, as black women often are, she really should stick to her day job, which is being an an admitted attorney of the High Court of South Africa with practice experience in litigation, specialising in administrative and contract law, and clerking for the Chief Justice at the Constitutional Court of South Africa.
When Rakhivhane took to social media to reflect on The Incident, she was totally in denial: ‘There have been a few times in my life where I have walked away from similar experiences, feeling small and frustrated at myself for not saying anything in the moment. Pretending that I wasn’t disturbed or offended, putting on awkward smiles and venting about it after the fact. Whilst this situation has had its ups and downs, I sleep at night proud that this wasn’t one of those times. I do not feel small. I do not feel helpless. I do not have regret.’
It’s commendable that Nando’s recognised how helpless she really was, even if she didn’t.
The unwashed masses
Cliff referred to research conducted by the Institute of Race Relations (IRR), which surveyed a representative sample of South Africans who told it the most serious problems the country faces are unemployment, crime, corruption, housing and service delivery, and the least serious problems are land reform, inequality and racism. It also found that only 16% of black people reported having experienced any form of racism over the past five years.
Rakhivhane made it clear, however, that these results were wrong, because she experienced grave racism ‘on a daily basis’ herself. Only a racist would dare to dismiss her experience as ‘anecdotal and irrelevant’. Good on Nando’s for recognising that her lived experienced is more valid than cold, abstract statistics.
The Institute for Justice and Reconciliation did its own survey about race, and what it found was equally alarming. Only 18% of respondents did not believe South Africa has made progress with reconciliation after the end of apartheid. It found that the biggest obstacles to reconciliation were corruption and political parties exploiting social divisions for political gain, and that although addressing racism was important, by comparison with other obstacles it was the least important. Only 6.8% of respondents disagreed with the view that we are South Africans first and shouldn’t think of ourselves in terms of other groups we belong to.
The survey also found that the institutions in which respondents had the most confidence were the SABC, the ANC, the president, and SARS, in that order. That shows you the risk of asking questions of the uninformed, uneducated masses: they’re clueless.
That’s why representative surveys such as this, and those conducted by the IRR, are obviously wrong when they find that race ranks low on people’s list of priorities.
They asked ignorant people who don’t know what’s good for them, instead of intelligent black women like Rakhivhane, who could tell them.
Freedom of speech
In its notice, Nando’s says it supports healthy debate and the right to freedom of speech. That’s great marketing talk, but one cannot expect a multinational corporation to stand by silly principles when an angry mob is offended, obviously.
Nando’s may be famous for its humorous and irreverent advertising, but you’ll notice that none of its adverts ever upset potential customers. They might poke fun at politicians, or companies, or occasionally individuals, but they’ll never tackle a subject over which there is no unanimity among its target market.
In fact, this is the company’s stated policy: ‘We go out of our way not to be controversial as this implies a sense of division, and frankly what we need as a country now is less division and more honesty around our collective challenges. We’re delighted that our advertising (like our chicken) has been enjoyed by the majority of South African’s without alienating or upsetting anyone.’
Nando’s supports healthy debate and the right to freedom of speech only as long as those participating in the debate aren’t in conflict, and the content of their speech does not hurt anyone’s feelings.
But, as Salman Rushdie said: ‘What is freedom of expression? Without the freedom to offend, it ceases to exist.’
In other words, Nando’s doesn’t support free speech at all.
That is, of course, perfectly justifiable, and nobody expects marketing gumpf to be true. Nando’s might boost its popularity by saying things like, ‘we take pride in joining conversations and sparking debate around all relevant topics that are in the public interest,’ but freedom of speech is not its business.
Its business is peri-peri chicken. And its purpose is to make a profit.
I remember dining at the very first Nando’s on the corner of Main and Ferreira in Rosettenville, and saying to my mates, ‘Damn, this is good chicken. I sure hope they don’t get into the free speech business and upset politically correct people. As long as they don’t do that, this is going to be a very profitable business.’
White supremacists
The only people who are defending Gareth Cliff, saying that they can’t see what he said that was racist, are hardcore white supremacists, like Dumo Denga, Nzuzo Khathi and Koketso Resane, making ridiculous claims like identity politics won’t solve basic service delivery problems.
Another white supremacist, Kabelo Kgobisa-Ngcaba, says Nando’s decision to cut ties with Cliff ‘was an unworthy act of corporate cowardice’. (Can I even quote those hateful words without sounding racist myself?)
The racists frequently appear on each others’ shows, so it shouldn’t be a surprise to find Khathi and Resane on Sihle Ngobese’s channel. Here’s Resane ranting hatefully against Rakhivhane and in favour of Cliff; you really need to hear it to believe it. And here’s another of Ngobese’s guests, defending the IRR’s racist data.
Yet another white racist, Phumlani Majozi, went as far as calling Gareth Cliff a national hero. Disgraceful!
On behalf of all black women, I want to applaud Nando’s swift action to rescue poor Rakhivhane from the clutches of evil white men. She should never have been on that show.
And on behalf of Nando’s shareholders, I want to applaud the company for turning on a dime. Losing the business of woke consumers is not a price worth paying for petty niceties like freedom of speech.
As a resolute defender of corporate interests, I say put profit first! Spines don’t pay the rent.