Racist rant angers South Africans

By Hassan Isilow

JOHANNESBURG

A white South African man has caused outrage across the country by posting a video of himself uttering a racial slur against black people.

In a video posted online, Adam Catzavelos uses the word "Kaffir" while celebrating that there were no black people on a Greek Island beach where he was on holiday. The video has since gone viral.

The derogatory K- word was used during the apartheid era to abuse black people so as to humiliate and oppress them in their own country of birth.

Catzavelos whose family runs a chain of stores said in a statement they were appalled by his video.

They said the video was “abhorrent and they fully dissociate themselves from the sentiments expressed’’.

“We reject racism in any form. Adam Catzavelos has been dismissed with immediate effect from the family business, St. Georges Fine Foods, and his minority share holding will be unwound,’’ the statement said.

The Economic Freedom Fighters Party (EFF) has laid a case of racism against Catzavelos at a local police station.

“We are not going to tolerate to be called the K-word or other names,” EFF Johannesburg leader Mandisa Mashego told journalists after opening the case.

She called for a boycott of the Catzavelos family business.

South Africa emerged from decades of racial segregation in 1994.