We said yesterday that the wolves would circle following ‘ol Matthew’s open letter of apology, but we didn’t expect his former classmates to turn on him so quickly.

Enter Nick Mulgrew, who went to school with Matthew up in KZN. He’s penned a piece on the Mail & Guardian, so let’s run through that and see what he had to say:

I wasn’t his biggest fan, and I can’t say I was surprised when, just before this furore broke, a screenshot of his now-famous Facebook status popped up on my phone along with the message, “Remember this oke from high school?”…

This isn’t a character assassination: Matt has already assassinated his character enough himself, both with his original post and with his tone-deaf apology on Cape Talk that sounded – in the words of my housemate – as if he was a small child caught by his teacher pulling another kid’s hair. “Sorry, ma’am. No, I didn’t mean to pull hard. Ja, no, I promise, I won’t do it again”…

But Matt is not a typical white Capetonian: he’s a typical white guy from KZN, which is actually where we grew up. We might, if we’re feeling cynical, even call him a typical white South African. Because, be honest: every white person in this country knows a man like Matt – not someone who merely grandstands about BEE at the braai or quotas in the Springboks, but someone who believes that every contentious thing in our changing society is sharply, deliberately and personally pointed at them, and chooses only the most base and disgusting language to express it…

School taught Matt and I about orgasms and how to avoid contracting HIV, but no one told us what the K-word does to the psyches of black people, or what sexual harassment does to a woman. That was left out, for us to learn – or not learn, blatantly – for ourselves…

But this isn’t just politics, or just about social justice: this is our daily lives as South Africans. Maybe, if that difficult conversation was encouraged, one of our black friends or black teachers would have explained to the non-blacks in our class the baggage that that word carries, what specific horrors it represented; things that Matt and I and everyone else would have been forced to consider as part of our education…

I’ve only selected certain extracts from Nick’s piece, so if you want to read it in full head over HERE.

Does the punishment befit the crime? I guess you can be the judge of that.

We can end off here with Zapiro’s cartoon on the matter:

[source:m&g]