Remember the Spur incident? I deliberately did not watch the video clip when it was posted. I preferred to watch the commentary on social media. Sitting down to throw in my six pence worth a week after the fact, I did watch the clip.
From my point of view, the incident ensured that the nation forgot about the trivial nonsense we were going on about for a while; all kinds of inconsequential nonsense such as economic decline, crime, xenophobia, strikes, lack of service delivery, unemployment, drought, State Capture, #feesmustfall, the Guptas, SABC, ESKOM, PRASA and SASSA. What a relief not to be bombarded with these issues for a week.
For a moment, let’s make all of the patrons green – no black no white and nothing in between: A male parent loses his cool due to an alleged older child of a female parent hurt his little one. A fairly natural parental reaction I would think. What to do, how to handle this situation? In this instance a confrontation ensues with the result of intimidation, bullying, the threat of violence and verbal abuse – way beyond wrong in my book. Children do not know how to handle conflict and therefore need to be taught, trained and coached in a manner which will have them grow into responsible adults. In order to do that, adults need to – well – be adult about it. This was clearly not the case. The man is huge, aggressive and intimidating. The woman obviously worried and more than likely scared about the outcome. She, as with the man, was instinctively only concerned about her child’s well-being. As with all incidents, if one did not observe everything that transpired, one cannot judge and take sides without all the facts. What one can judge and comment on, considering what can be seen and heard from the video clip is that the man acted like a real idiot – stupidity in motion.
The moral of the story could have ended here by saying stupid people breed stupid children. But alas, they were not green! They represented the wonderful South African race division: black versus white or white versus black – take you pick and use it to bash someone over the head with it – exactly what the social media community did.
Racism was most probably a factor; however, this became the focus point. Instead of addressing the root cause it is much easier and more fun to fuel the divide. And then there was the blame put on Spur. Spur who? Spur the restaurant in the Glen? Spur group the business? Spur management, Spur patrons? Let me clarify: I read comments such as the following: “Spur is racist!” RIGHT!!!! As far as I know, Spur franchises are owned by a variety of so called races. They also do not ban patrons on the colour of their skin.
Then of course, my favourite: Boycott Spur! The number of people supporting a boycott of the restaurant and the reasons given (all racist comments!) truly blew my mind. So, two grown-ups – I use the term grown-ups due to their age and the fact that they are biological parents – have an altercation and the whole company is to blame! Which Spur do we boycott? Only the one where this specific incident took place, or all of them? Well thought out people!!! I very seldom react to such cleverness on face book but here is my response which I posted:
Johan van Zyl That is a brilliant way to resolve problems: let’s boycott all businesses who do not control their customers. Soon all businesses will have to close their doors and we can return to being hunters and gatherers – utopia here we come
I was about to rant and rave further as the comments posted clearly indicates that these are people who clearly lack a basic education. But just in time I recalled that the boycott post was from a family member who is a medical doctor and holds a PhD. My dear old dad once told me that academic qualifications do not constitute intelligence – how true.
