Kindness Wins After Waitress Bullied by #RhodesMustFall Activist in South Africa
A waitress in Cape Town is due to receive a tip this week of R44,777.70… thanks to the kindness of strangers who were shocked, and moved to action, after a #RhodesMustFall activist from Oxford University, Ntokozo Qwabe, bragged online about having brought her to tears with a comment on his table’s bill. After Qwabe’s rather lengthy explanation online […]
A waitress in Cape Town is due to receive a tip this week of R44,777.70… thanks to the kindness of strangers who were shocked, and moved to action, after a #RhodesMustFall activist from Oxford University, Ntokozo Qwabe, bragged online about having brought her to tears with a comment on his table’s bill.
After Qwabe’s rather lengthy explanation online of what had occurred on Thursday evening at the Obz Café, Sihle Ngobese – spokesperson for the Western Cape Social Development MEC Albert Fritz – personally gave the waitress a R50 tip to make up for the lost one… which then snowballed into a fund-raising initiative by CliffCentral podcast host, Roman Cabanac.
By Sunday night R44,777.70 had been raised for the waitress, and Ngobese wrote on Twitter that “kindness wins!!!”
Cabanac confirmed that there were almost 100 donations with 30 percent coming from overseas.
Qwabe has been labelled a ‘hypocrite’ by many after boasting on social media about a racist comment his activist friend wrote on the restaurant bill.
After their meal in Observatory, Qwabe updated his Facebook status to say he was ‘elated’ and started the post with ‘LOL’ (laugh out loud), before going on to explain that the waitress had cried “typical white tears” after reading his companion’s comment that “we will give tip when you return the land”. [Read the full post below.]
The incident has sparked outrage amongst many South Africans who felt 24-year-old Qwabe, who has campaigned to remove the Cecil John Rhodes statue from Oriel College, was unkind and racist.
Qwabe himself wrote of the incident that it had left him “unable to stop smiling because something so black, wonderful & LIT just happened!”
His post went viral with many criticising him for being prejudiced, foolish, and “hateful”.
Qwabe is a South African masters student at Oxford, where he was a recipient of a Rhodes scholarship during his undergraduate law degree.
The restaurant’s manager, Rush Alexander, told the UK’s Daily Mail that “we were very surprised as everyone in Cape Town just gets along. It was racist and it was unjust. However, we don’t think we will take any further action. It was just the words of one ignorant man.”
Some of Qwabe’s friends have come out in support of him, including one who posted the following picture of having dinner with Qwabe last night, along with the words: “Worry not. The tip was paid!!”
Without a doubt, with the huge amount raised for the waitress, South Africans have proved again how the majority of citizens would rather work together in kindness than be broken by insults.
LOL wow unable to stop smiling because something so black, wonderful & LIT just happened! And of course, the catalyst was a radical non-binary trans black activist – Wandile Dlamini – from the Rhodes Must Fall movement. Because trans activists have BEEN the ultimate blessers of this decolonial struggle!
To cut the long story short, we are out at Obz Cafe with the said activist, and the time for the bill comes. Our waitress is a white woman. I ask the said activist what the going rate for tips/gratuity is in these shores. They look at me very reluctantly and they say ‘give me the slip, I’ll sort that out’. I give them the slip.
They take a pen & slip in a note where the gratuity/tip amount is supposed to be entered. The note reads in bold: “WE WILL GIVE TIP WHEN YOU RETURN THE LAND”. The waitress comes to us with a card machine for the bill to be sorted out. She sees the note & starts shaking. She leaves us & bursts into typical white tears (like why are you crying when all we’ve done is make a kind request? lol!). Anyways, so this white woman goes to her colleagues who are furious. She exits to cry at the back & a white male colleague of hers reluctantly comes out to address us & to annoy us more with his own white tears telling us that he finds our act “racist”.
We then start breaking it down for this white man & ask him why they are catching feelings when we haven’t even started (like the part where we take up arms hasn’t even come & yall are already out here drowning us in your white tears? Really white people? Wow.). We start drawing him to the political nature of the act & why we couldn’t be bothered that they decided to catch feelings from the note. We tell him it’s great that business as usual has stopped & the pressing issue of land is now on the agenda in that space – seeing the country was celebrating ‘Freedom Day’ yesterday. We then chase him back to do his job. And continue with our conversation before exiting the café.
Moral of the story: the time has come when no white person will be absolved. We are tired of “not all white people” and all other bullshit. We are here, and we want the stolen land back. No white person will be out here living their best life while we are out here being a landless and dispossessed black mass. NO white person shall rest. It is irrelevant whether you personally have land/wealth or you don’t. Go to your fellow white people & mobilise for them to give us the land back. That will be the starting point of all our interactions from now. We will agitate all our spaces with the big question: WHERE IS THE LAND?
Thank you to all the non binary, trans & all other black bodies who have been at the helm of this decolonial moment in the settler colony known as South Afrika. NOTHING will ever be the same again. Alibuye Izwe Lethu!#IzweLethuNgoku