Petition Calls For Racism Charge Against Rus­sel Kruger, East Lon­don Businessman Over 'Blackface Joke'

An East Lon­don busi­ness­man has come un­der fire for a racist post in which his son is painted in “black­face”. But Rus­sel Kruger, who ad­mits he is the au­thor, says the post was an “in­no­cent joke”.

Kruger, the owner of a num­ber of hos­pi­tal­ity es­tab­lish­ments in and around the city, took to Face­book and Instagram on Thurs­day night to post a pic­ture of his son’s face painted black with the cap­tion: “Us­ing my kids to ap­ply for busi­ness grants hope we come right.”

As a re­sult of the Covid-19 out­break, Pres­i­dent Cyril Ramaphosa an­nounced ma­jor re­lief ef­forts, some in the form of grants, which would cush­ion dif­fer­ent sec­tors in the coun­try dur­ing the lock­down. Busi­nesses should be BEE-com­pli­ant.

Kruger, whose busi­nesses are in the tourism sec­tor, ad­mit­ted on Fri­day that the post was his.

He said his busi­nesses faced fi­nan­cial dif­fi­cul­ties which could be al­le­vi­ated by pay­outs for his 60 em­ploy­ees.

By the time the post went vi­ral on Face­book, Kruger had de­ac­ti­vated his ac­count af­ter his pro­file is­sued a post which said his ac­count had been hacked. Later, an ex­pla­na­tion was pro­vided on why his son’s face was painted black.

Kruger’s Instagram and Face­book ac­counts are linked.

“I posted a pic­ture on Instagram of my son who had painted his face black and I said maybe I should use him to get a busi­ness grant. The post was ob­vi­ously an in­no­cent joke and I had just been in­formed that grant fund­ing was un­likely to be given in the tourism in­dus­try to non-BEE busi­nesses,” he wrote on the post.

Petition Calls For Racism Charge Against Rus­sel Kruger, East Lon­don Businessman Over 'Blackface Joke'

“This has gone vi­ral and my family and I have been threat­ened all night with this and I’m ap­peal­ing to any­one who sees this to set the truth in place. My child used a face mask and it’s black, that’s no sin. My child walked into the of­fice and I posted a pic­ture in­no­cently of him with a black mask he painted as he was play­ing a wolf game.”

Re­spond­ing to the Face­book post which sug­gested his ac­count was hacked, Kruger said: “No-one hacked my ac­count. My wife saw the post and wrote that my ac­count was hacked and woke me as I was sleep­ing. I then deleted the post as I don’t want to get into a racist is­sue with my in­no­cent child be­ing in­volved and this is un­ac­cept­able and un­true.”

Kruger said he was sorry if the so­cial me­dia post of­fended peo­ple.

“I only help peo­ple and have many friends of all races so please don’t by any means think this was racist,” he said.

In re­sponse to Kruger’s post, so­cial me­dia users started a pe­ti­tion call­ing on the Hu­man Rights Com­mis­sion to charge Kruger with racism.

The pe­ti­tion had 865 sig­na­tures by Fri­day af­ter­noon.

“SA is one of the most un­equal coun­tries in the world, the in­equal­i­ties are be­tween black and whites. The coun­try is fur­ther rid­dled with racism car­ried for­ward by un­apolo­getic racists who find plea­sure in us­ing the pain of black peo­ple as a joke,” part of the pe­ti­tion read.

ANC pro­vin­cial sec­re­tary Lu­lama Ngcukay­i­tobi con­demned Kruger’s post.

“This is crude racist at­ti­tude is very back­ward and the so­ci­ety must re­ject this at­ti­tude with the con­tempt it de­serves,” he said. “The whole coun­try is sin­gle-minded on what it needs and how the so­ci­ety must nav­i­gate this process.

“This Covid-19 is non-racial, non-sex­ist and non-dis­crim­i­nat­ing on wealth. Rus­sel Kruger is play­ing with fire and should re­frain from this. What is needed is hu­man sol­i­dar­ity and col­lab­o­rat­ing at­ti­tude.”

Source: www.dispatchlive.co.za