Ever watched 7de Laan? Nooooo!! But its the most popular Afrikaans soap opera ever! Watched by millions of… Afrikaaners, its… errrr… brilliant, no doubt. Like all soaps, the stories of which won’t particularly ‘add up’ in the real world but exist within the rarified context of their own little soap bubble. Which now and again burst into the outside. And on 7de Laan that happened when they showed their first ever mixed race kiss. Yup, just 25 years after the end of Apartheid, a black man and a white woman sucked face on the little screen. And there was uproar. It was the Boer war all over again. Two years ago the same soap screened its first ‘gay kiss’ and there was minor complaint. But mixed race!!!

Which is why I really don’t like South Africa and will never return. Place is beautiful but has, to my heightened sensitivity, a really strong ‘undercurrent’ of unease. And whilst never feeling that I was at risk (but I never do) I just felt ‘uncomfortable’ most of the time. Hated the vast inequality between the mansions of Cape Town and the shanty town next door. Yet people love it and return year after year.

Apartheid died (in the official sense, if not the socio-economic one) 25 years ago yet they can still be offended by this kiss. And I don’t know why I’m surprised because the American Civil War ended 150 years ago but there’s still ‘that attitude’ to be found all over the South. And some of the North. Bit of the West…

Over here we have different races. We have Diane Abbott. And a columnist in the paper last night was bemoaning that on Question Time last week Fiona Bruce (all bow; we love Fi-fi) was aggressive and disrespectful to a ‘black woman in politics’. Because there are so few at ‘that level’. And that comment itself is itself racist. Fiona Bruce, eager to make her mark on the programme, is aggressive and disrespectful to all people WHO DON’T GET THEIR FACTS STRAIGHT OR CONTRADICT THEMSELVES STUPIDLY. So to ask for better treatment for Ms Abbott just because she’s not a middle-class white man is wrong. Fiona was confrontational to Diane Abbott because she’s an idiot. Whatever colour she may be. Time to call a spade a spade.

Happy Thursday

A xxxx