At the recent ‘Kinky Summer’s New Year’s Eve Festival’, a group of Coloured friends were informed by the security personnel that they cannot enter.
Upon enquiring why they could not enter, despite having already purchased tickets, they were told it was because they are Coloured and would attract gangsterism.
However, they were ‘allowed entry’ after putting up a fight and insisting to be allowed in.
The incident, which took place on the evening of the 31st in Franschoek, was detailed on an Instagram post by one of the victims, Lana Fouten.
In her post, she suggested that if the organisers of the event do not want Coloureds to attend their events, they “should have clearly stated on their website or promo video”.
She also described the shock and humiliation they experienced because of the racist incident.
“I honestly have no words at how disrespected my friends were, all because of their race,” wrote Lana.
“It was as if they were targets instead of humans.”
The group eventually decided to leave the event because of the incident, instead having “a much better and safer time at home together”.
Lana also pointed out that at the same event, “a white man who was on drugs, attacked a white female by choking her”.
He was however ‘let off easily’ and she suggested that “had it been a coloured man, the guy would’ve been arrested”.
At the end of her post, she urged her followers to make their disgust known by tagging the organisers of the event.
A few hours later, after witnessing the massive response, the organisers of the event issued a formal apology, claiming they find the racist incident to be ‘unacceptable’.
They claimed that their “policy is, always has been, and always will be inclusiveness and being completely blind to race” and promised that racists incidents “will never, ever happen again”.
They went on further to state that the security company has been fired and suggested that the security personnel was on “a weird power trip” and ‘made up their own policies’.
Despite their apology and claims of innocence, most of the persons commenting on the post did not seem to believe them, suggesting that this is not the fault of the security personnel.
The general consensus seems to be that it is highly unlikely that the security personnel would make up their own rule about excluding persons of colour, unless they were instructed to do so by the event organisers.
They further went on to suggest that the racist behaviour has been ongoing for several years and there has been no attempt to remedy it.
A Coloured commentator also recalled a similar incident years earlier, where a different security company profiled him as a drug dealer, kicked him out, searched his car and stole half of his valuables.
Another suggested that the random and unwarranted searching of cars of persons of colour seems to have been a common occurrence over the past few years.
Several commentators pointed to the fact event’s Instagram page and promotional videos generally only include white people, creating the impression that persons of colour aren’t welcome.
It also appears that when the organisers were called out for their ‘erasure of persons of colour’, the response of the organisers was to delete all comments highlighting this subtle racism and even at one point, telling those complaining to ‘stay away’.
It was also suggested that the events are unsafe and that instead of protecting their patrons, the organisers’ security personnel chose to focus on harassing people of colour.
This was related to allegations that “tents slashed open” and belongings stolen.
Many of the commentators stated that they would either not be attending any of their events while others stated that they would not return.
Others suggested that Coloureds need to organise their own events and to refuse handing over their money to people that is openly discriminatory.
[maxbutton id=”1″ ]