The Cwecwe saga shows how righteous anger, distorted through race, becomes hysteria.
Allowed to flourish unchallenged, evasions and euphemisms will wreck us.
One is that we play politics with race, pretending prejudice and racism run only one way. Another is that we call child rape “teen pregnancy”.
In present-day South Africa, these combine disastrously.
Racism hasn’t vanished, but shifted shape. Where a minority once directed its racism at a majority, the switch has flipped.
Public racial hostility, in its most aggressive manifestations online and from some politicians, now often runs from the African majority towards coloured, Indian and white minorities.
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None of this denies history, inequality, or legitimate anger. It insists on a single standard. Racism is intolerable, whoever it targets.
At the softer end is race as a veto in politics. The reaction to Helen Zille’s selection as the DA’s 2026 Joburg mayoral candidate is illustrative.
Many in the ANC, its union and communist allies, as well as the EFF and ActionSA, dismiss competence as irrelevant and say she should be rejected because she is white.
At the harder end are ostensibly race-free social issues that, because race permeates everything, turn explosive.
Take child and teenage rape. The cold statistics are horrific:
- In the four years to 2021, public-sector data show births to girls aged 10-14 rose by almost 50% to just over 4 000 a year.
- While the teen birth rate has declined – still about 365 teen births a day – ultra-young motherhood has lately increased. In the Eastern Cape, deliveries for 10-14 are up 84% to 661 a year. In Gauteng in 2024 there were 23 691 teen pregnancies, 521 ultra-young mothers.
- Roughly 40% of all reported sexual offences – about 53 500 in 2022/23 – involve child victims, with rape the single most reported crime against children. Yet only 474 cases of statutory rape were reported in 2022/23.
- And then there is “baby rape” – the sexual assault of infants and toddlers – a small share of cases in official data and a particular shame.
Public reaction to this national emergency is inconsistent. When a story fits a racial narrative, it is punitive; when it doesn’t, it can be muted.
The Cwecwe saga shows how righteous anger, distorted through race, becomes hysteria.
A seven-year-old pupil nicknamed Cwecwe was allegedly “brutally raped” at Bergview College in Matatiele in October last year.
The white principal, Jaco Pieterse, was wrongly identified as the perpetrator.
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What began online was amplified by mainstream media, sparking mass marches – requiring army intervention – and a torrent of abuse and threats.
Even then police minister Senzo Mchunu fingered Pieterse. Counterevidence emerged. Pieterse was not at the school at the time.
The National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) had already decided in November not to prosecute for lack of conclusive evidence.
In April, Mchunu formally apologised but by then Pieterse and his family had gone into hiding after threats and intimidation.
He has since said his life was “completely destroyed”. We’re a country with enormous social, economic and political problems.
We can’t afford the distortions that come with euphemism and evasion, with prejudice and racism.
Call things by their names: under-16 pregnancy is the red flag of a crime, not a “cultural” or “lifestyle” statistic.
Racism is racism, whoever wields it. There are practical remedies.
Enforce mandatory reporting of sexual abuse in schools and clinics, then prosecute swiftly and publicly.
Hold politicians and editors to ethical standards. In public life, drop race as a veto.
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