It has become rather obvious that the recent poster that has been thoroughly depicted by the students’ wing of the Democratic Alliance (DA) viz, Democratic Alliance Student Organization (DASO) not only depicted a thousands meanings as the adage goes about how a picture can have a lot of meanings. But it also sent a lot of tempers flares amongst the clearly distinct bourgeois, peasant and proletariat lines of inequalities that is our so called rainbow nation.
With the sentiments of DASO probably been of Nobel intentions, we can’t see past the misconception from incorrect reasoning that is the poster. To me as I sat and disgruntled the poster and used the same method that I was taught at the bourgeois school, I safely came to the conclusion that DASO was trying to tell us that we can cohabit only if we are prepared to say the white man is superior than the black, thus perpetuating but carefully tweaking the architect of Hendrick Verwoerd of a neighborly society that knows and embraces its indifferences to allow the half baked rainbow nation that was only but a dream for the Mandelas, the Sisulus and the heroes and heroines et al.
Here is my deciphering, encoding of the decoded. The caricature that was conjured overnight said and stood striped and bare to me as a picture that depicts two races, which I think was the aim. It however goes on and tries to show the intimacy between the two, I suppose this is to perhaps depict an interracial relationship. Where the failing starts dawning, as it epitomized the clear lines that suggested how DASO and it’s mother body DA represent. A South Africa were we all live in with a master to be servered, you can try and search for the poster and tell try to thoroughly have a look and tell me if you don’t see how the black female on the poster is firstly showing how she depends and looks up to the master, with the master of course looking down on her. Not only is this depicting that but it also shows who is to be servered and who does the serving.
It also metaphorically when put asunder perpetuates a South Africa that always believed a black person is to be screwed to the gallows, the idiocy that came with it was that I understand it was not designed by the white men in the student wing. But people of colour, the only two reasons that can better explain how the poster got to be approved is either it was a slothful day on their part or the master found it depicts what they would rather represents as they to some sorely know that a nation of interracial screwing is inevitable.
I wouldn’t dare label the poster callous, but I know for a fact I felt and heaved a sigh with chagrin as I saw this instrument that went to clearly show how far we have gone as a nation that is not ready to embrace change or rather how we haven’t went anywhere in the contrary. But the truth is that the obstinate that is innate to a vast majority in the minority lurks about us and someone must plan to rectify this or plan to forfeit all, including lives.
Without taking anything away from the white people that have seen past the issue of race, this is all I have to say about the disgust that is the DASO poster.
I must also say that I found SASCO’s response to all of this highly immature and totally unnecessary. Not that I would mind a white maid, I sure would.
Mafedi Selepe.
mafedi 
Pingback: South Africa: Students Organisation Anti-Racism Poster Causes a Stir · Global Voices
Pingback: Sexy Anti-Racism Poster Makes Waves in South Africa | Care2 Causes
Pingback: África do Sul: Cartaz Estudantil Contra Racismo Causa Celeuma · Global Voices em Português
Pingback: Südafrika: Antirassimusposter von Studenten erregt Aufsehen · Global Voices auf Deutsch
Surprising how such a poster creates the debate in South Africa 20 years after Mandela was freed. I am a from France, where we had this kind of posters on university camps from all “progressist” students’ organizations for years and I would even say decades (first posters like that appeared in the late 70′, and of course there were left-wing organizations). We now have student organizations still doing this kind of graphics with same sex couples (still the left), while it not even choking anymore the right wing to see mixed couples, etc. Even if I don’t know exactly what are the political orientations of DASO (I guess it’s someting like seizing an opportunity for them to appear more modern than they could be?), I would say that this kind of poster is still useful, be it in SA or elsewhere to promote mixing people, abolishing race barriers, and saying “fuck you” to all those who still think a black man and white man, an Asian woman and a Latin American woman, etc. are not equal, and those who are still dreaming of their color, origin or language not being “altered”…
Then remains the question of why a black girl and a white man, and why not a white woman and a black man? Just find who created this picture and I guess you would have an answer.
Well, greetings from a french-russian-ivorian man, having mixed children and who still wants to believe the struggle anti-apartheid South Africans had till independance from apartheid regime is to ensure a brighter future to my children.