HuffPost blog on ‘disenfranchising’ white men sparks row

A radical blog calling for disenfranchisement of white men across the world, published on a South African news website, has sparked a huge debate around racism.

The column – Could it be time to deny white men the franchise? – was posted on Huffington Post’s South African website on April 13, but was soon taken off following massive outroar.

The debate reached its climax when Verashni Pillay stepped down as the top editor of Huffington Post South Africa on April 22, after a ruling by the country’s Press Ombudsman dubbed the column as “hate speech”.

The radical blog themed on white men took potshots at supporters of US President Donald Trump and backers of the Brexit vote. Authored by a contributing author Shelly Garland, it was published on April 13.

Garland, however, later turned out to be a 37-year-old white male research scholar Marius Roodt, according to Huffington Post. The editors of the publication tracked Roodt down at his workplace and confronted him about the blog, which many Twitter users also called for “factual discrepancies”.

According to a recording of the encounter between the editors and Roodt, the researcher expressed regret, but said he was motivated to highlight how poor “fact-checking” had become in contemporary journalism.

“In hindsight I wouldn't have done it, I didn't think it would get this big," he was quoted as saying.

Excerpts from the Huffington Post blog, which has been taken off the internet:

• Some of the biggest blows to the progressive cause in the past year have often been due to the votes of white men.
• If white men no longer had the vote, the progressive cause would be strengthened. It would not be necessary to deny white men indefinitely – the denial of the vote to white men for 20 years (just less than a generation) would go some way to seeing a decline in the influence of reactionary and neo-liberal ideology in the world.
• The influence of reckless white males were one of the primary reasons that led to the Great Recession which began in 2008.
• A denial of the franchise to white men, could see a redistribution of global assets to their rightful owners. After all, white men have used the imposition of Western legal systems around the world to reinforce modern capitalism.
• It is very likely that the majority of the world's assets are in the hands of white males, despite them making up less than 10% of the world's population.” (This fact is, however, contested)
• Although this may seem unfair and unjust, allowing white males to continue to call the shots politically and economically, following their actions over the past 500 years, is the greater injustice.

Pillay’s resignation sparks a huge debate around race relations

Racial faultlines re-emerged on South African social media after the blog was published. South Africa’s predominant African community threw their weight behind Pillay, some even mistaking her to be “black”.

However, the fact that Pillay has an Indian heritage wasn’t lost on other South Africans.

According to South Africa’s national Census of 2011, 1.2% of the country’s 51.7-million citizens were of Indian background. Durban has held the honour of being the ‘largest Indian city outside India’.

People of European background made up around 8% of South Africa’s population, but wielded significant economic and political clout over running the affairs. At almost 80%, Africans were the largest ethnic group in 2011.