Don’t!

No, just kidding, i have always said that waitering is the best job in the world when everything goes smoothly [which working at Spur for five years it never did, but nothing the hummed bars of the Mission Impossible theme song couldn’t fix as i spun myself around the place].

By now you have likely heard some version or versions of the Ntokozo Qwabe/Ashleigh Schultz Obz Cafe waitressing debacle and probably have some opinions on it. Or just don’t care – when will my Facebook friends STOP SPEAKING ABOUT THIS.

But maybe it’s a good thing. No, a R100 000 [and climbing?] tip for having someone be a bit of a dick to you on a waitressing shift is not in my opinion a good thing. But another high profile incident that is making waves on Social Media. Another opportunity to LISTEN and LEARN and ENGAGE and build relationship with people who think differently and an exercise in seeing things from different perspectives. Over the last year it has felt like incidents like UCT art-burning, WITS “Fuck White People” t-shirts, Penny Sparrowing and more have given us a science laboratory that is useful for throwing different chemicals together and seeing what explodes [and what creates gold].

This was a Facebook status i wrote to help give one aspect of perspective i felt was missing in some of my engagements with people:

Black activist treating a waitress like a piece of crap to make a point = Not cool.

The crazy amount of money people are raising to tip said waitress is also not cool. Particularly in the light of all the abuses, racist incidents, etc etc that people don’t raise a finger slash wallet to help out with and THIS was the incident that got people reaching for their money.

It is important that we are able to see that both incidents can at the same time be not cool for different reasons.

i expanded on it a little bit later with this:

Did you know that someone who drops a piece of paper on the ground and someone who kills someone can both be acts that are not okay? By saying to the litterer “That is not okay!” i am not for one second saying that littering is as bad as murder. There is no need in those instances to compare the two things. They are both not okay. They should both receive different consequences because they are not okay to differing levels and that’s where the comparing comes in. But from a standpoint of looking at them both as individual incidents, it is okay to say that both of them are not okay.

In unrelated news the waitress’ tip has apparently hit R50 000 and so if someone wants to slur me publically, i’d say go for it.

My ‘third way’ brain is wondering who this waitress is because if she receives this big pile of money, isn’t that an incredible opportunity for her to turn something [a ridiculous thing] into something beautiful and healing and restorative? So if anyone knows her, send her my way, i may have some ideas how we can find some gold in this rubble…

That was all before i heard that Ashleigh’s mom has cancer and so quite possibly the tears she burst into in a tough moment at work were more related to that fact than the “white tears” accusation that has been levelled at her. [It’s amazing how complex stories can become once we give space to start peeling away the layers and seeing that most people do not live one dimensional lives]. That certainly puts my ‘third’ way idea into perspective because if i knew someone dying of cancer [oh, wait] and then suddenly a big pile of money arrived on my doorstep i might be a little conflicted in that. Maybe there is some kind of Both/And that can happen though where Ashleigh can use this as an opportunity to publically use a generous portion of the money towards some cause that promotes land reparation or justice for someone from another background as her. Come on Ashleigh, we’re cheering you on. #DoARightThing

While all this plays out one of the constant refrains is the reminder that this kind of abuse happens to people of colour all the time and i have yet to see a Twitter or GoFundMe campaign pouring in that direction. The story of the grandmother and the child in the Mitchell’s Plain and the broken chocolate [where she apparently fainted and the two of them ended up huddled together on the floor] went viral but not a cent was raised for them. Likewise with person urinating off of Cape Town club onto person’s head or domestic worker beat up on the side of the road and so on…

But, back to the waitress and the activist, there have been so many different perspectives roaming around the Facebook and i have shared some of them and encourage you to read them with an open mind and try and hear what’s being said before deciding whether you agree or disagree. Just start with hearing and then maybe learning will happen:

Elmien Du Plessis wrote this:

Since the story of the non-tip flooded my timeline yesterday I have been thinking quite a bit about why the story bothers me.
Let me state from the outset that the words “we will give you a tip when you return the stolen land” does not make me personally uneasy. My short response to that is simply that I endorse the return of land, but it needs to be a government led process based on fair and transparent procedures. I think it is realistic to say that land reform thus far was not very successful, mainly due to government not using the laws efficiently, leading to inefficient spending of a small budget for land reform. I also think the people who lost out most by this inefficiency are the black rural people. That in short.

I will also not elaborate on the waitress’ tears. I believe we all react emotionally sometimes and I don’t think there is a right or wrong way to react. Maybe a better way, but that comes with therapy.

But if I could advise her, I would encourage her to start googling “white fragility”. I felt the way I imagine she felt one evening while I was on a (public) panel with Andile Mngxitama. All my well meant utterances were minced and placed in the colonial sausage. It is a kak and uncomfortable place to be. I didn’t want to come out of my study for two days. When I got over my anger, I bought all the necessary books and googled myself to death to understand where people come from. And understanding means just that. I don’t have to agree, but I must try and understand. I must read the story.

That being stated, I do think Ntokozo was irresponsible on his Facebook page. I would expect more from a leader. He need not hold the hand of the waitress and sing Kumbaya, but I don’t know if purposefully hurting another person like that really gets us going forward. And hell, we need to move forward. But I am not one to dictate his discourse or leadership or where the movement must go or what he must do.

But the thing that puzzles me the most is the R14 000 raised for the shock and pain the white waitress went through. Being a seasoned waitress myself I know that sometimes there are just people that don’t tip. For various reasons. It is the casualty of waitressing – being dependent on tips for survival as opposed to decent wages. The crowd funding just adds to the divisive speak, just highlights the disparities, just adds to the banality of inequality. A waitress does not get a tip, crowdfunding raises R14 000. And the people who marvel at it, marvels in it in “us” and “them” speak It alleviates the waitress’ pain to something that should concern us more than, for instance, the pain that landless people experience every day. And it leaves me uneasy.

It would be interesting if Ntokozo, back when he was hitting the tills for R1800 a month to save money to study, would also be able to raise R14 000 in a day through crowdfunding for his studies. Because I am pretty sure he also feels insulted and hurt by a system that makes it very hard for people with his background to succeed. I doubt it..

And in that lies the problem with this story. Some people’s stories become the narrative of our divisiveness. And the reaction to it is much more damaging than the words “we will give you a tip when you return our stolen land”

My mate Sindile who expounds so much wisdom on the Book of Faces had this to say:

I happen to be FB friends with the person who has raised money for the Obz Cafe Waitress(Yeah my FB friend list is super diverse and actually a lot of you hate each other’s views and thankfully I get to see that and form what I believe are generally sharper opinions- but I digress).

Personally I think the raising 20k+ for the waitress is an overcooked response.

What I am interested in though more specifically is the fault lines this whole situation has revealed. I went and read the entire comments section on Mr Qwabe’s post and I came away with a couple of thoughts.

1) I still think he acted like an asshole

2) How come white people don’t get this enraged when black people are f*cked over even more brutally in that colonial outpost known as Cape Town?

3) DA MP’s jumped in to chime abuse at Mr Qwabe and yet they remain largely absent and non-abusive when crazy shit happens to black people in CT. ‘Member that taxi driver who got pissed on or that woman(domestic) walking to work in Claremont who got beaten up by some dude who jumped out his car and justified it by saying, “she looked like a prostitute”?

4) I can’t shake the feeling that certain things are region specific. For eg: The only people I know who TIP petrol attendants in JHB are white. Black people don’t do that. I’m not even sure they do that anywhere. Also and this is a question: Do white people in JHB tip black waiters and waitresses less? From what I’ve seen people in JHB are anal about good service and your tip will reflect that, but that is just my experience and not necessarily the truth. I’ve seen the same thing in Durban but again, that could just be my experience.

5) I get slightly iffy when middle class and affluent black people from JHB speak as if they are living in an intolerable situation. The most you have to deal with are micro-aggressions and also where ELSE in the world can you go where it is BETTER to be black? Where in the world do black people have as much upward mobility, have as much access to spaces traditionally occupied by white people? Is JHB perfect? No. Is it where we’d want it to be? Probably not.

6) I find some of the responses to the incident from black people(and some of their liberal white friends) disappointing. Apparently, It is a defense of “white people and their tears”(at least that was what I was told personally) to find someone who gloats over making another human being cry reprehensible. Well, honestly, you can go fuck yourselves, that’s my reply.

And later:

Can I give some of you a piece of advice?

The reason the Obz Cafe waitress got so much money(stands at 45k) is two fold and interconnected.

1) The tone on the original post was just aberrant. This story wouldn’t have gotten anywhere near as much traction if Mr Qwabe hadn’t displayed such a breathtaking amount of narcissism. Some of you also have this tendency of using buzzwords that are short-hand for something. The phrase “white tears” may have some complex and nuanced meaning(I admittedly don’t know what it is) but people who read that phrase in the context of Mr Qwabe’s stultifyingly arrogant post don’t know it. This is Communications 101. This phenomenon is called static ie don’t assume people reading what you write know what you MEAN.

2) While a lot of the people who did donate did it out of some sense of solidarity to the waitress, a large part of why donations keep rolling in is because people want to give Mr Qwabe and his defenders the middle finger. Human beings are surprisingly willing to part ways with money to give someone who is seen as a bully the middle finger and so the more you fight and lecture and tell people they are being privileged, the more money the waitress will get ie you’ve misdiagnosed what’s happening in the first place.

3) It’s a bit like watching pantomime tomfoolery. Everyone thinks they are right. Everyone on some level feels discomfort or is pissed off.

What has been exciting for me in watching these conversations play out on Social Media is that the accusations and personal attacks seem to be taking longer to arrive. Maybe it’s just cos all the guilty parties have tired of my opinions on these things and long since unfriended and unfollowed and are surrounding themselves with people who say what their itching ears want them to say. But i don’t think so. I THINK WE ARE GETTING BETTER AT THIS STUFF. The big question remains, ‘How long do we have?’ Impatience and frustration is growing while white people attend White Privilege and Racism School and will we get there in time? Who knows? There is no script to this thing, but progress is exciting. People starting to take on board that there may be a different perspective to theirs, that there may be a different way of viewing an event or interacting with it. People who are rising to the #NotOnOurWatch challenge and refusing to let racism and prejudice happen in front of them unchallenged. Stories are being shared, relationships are being deepened, reading is happening [My Robert Sobuke book is doing the rounds – might be time to buy a few more copies!], engagement seems to be deepening.

i have seen people turn full circle on this stuff [yes, i’m looking at you, Bob!] and have had some really encouraging conversations in my inbox and on watsapp and in other less public places. And i know i’m not the only one. i know of groups of Christian leaders of diversity who are meeting regularly in Joburg and really wrestling deeply with these things, spearheaded by some people who are really living it out in sacrificial ways. i am seeing huge interest in churches in Cape Town to host Deep Dive Dinner Conversations on Race not just with their leadership but all through their churches. We are getting there.

Will we get there in time? Well that certainly is the question of the day. We really have to. So i will continue hoping and doing what i can to help join the dots while knowing that my personal learning curve still needs to be so much higher. Come on South Africa: Let’s show the world one more time!

What are your thoughts on how that whole thing played out? Did you agree with Ntokozo’s actions? What about the size of the fund generated? How hopeful are you feeling right now? 

[For another great article with some thoughts on this whole situation by Jacques Rossouw, click here]