An act of premeditated racism

Dear sir,
Racism is bad in all its various forms. However, it is especially bad if the attack is not a result of stirred up, uncontrolled emotions but deliberate planning to serve a certain interest. If done on purpose to gain financially or politically, it is certainly one of the worst crimes imaginable.
This is so because the victim can actually do nothing about it, he/she was born as he/she is – one cannot change one’s race, one is utterly helpless if attacked on the grounds of it. One can change a lot of other things – your behaviour, your creed and your political affiliation, even your wife – but not how one is born.
Jan Poolman is going to be fired because he is white. He was told in his face that his employer, DMH, no longer needs him because management is looking for someone black. Management stated that ‘nothing is wrong with Poolman, nothing is wrong with his professionalism or anything else’. However, his skin colour is now wrong at the helm of the Namibian Sun! This was the reason given to him when he got notice about his future at the English daily. Ironically, he was told this by the group’s CEO, Mrs C. Greef, a white woman herself.
This move must be seen as a violation of laws – even our constitution – and we have to see it as premeditated and therefore malicious. And because this is so, it has to be condemned by all Namibians. We expect Poolman’s colleagues to rise up against what DMH tries to do; we pray that every right-thinking person in this country will stand behind Poolman and that each and every body able to express him or herself will go against this until now unprecedented, but out and out wicked move of DMH.
To tolerate it will mean to invite apartheid back to Namibia, it will be a retrogressive step in time and will open every door to human abuse again. The moral integrity of our society is in danger, our personal freedom under threat if we do not act immediately. And all of us – black, brown and white – are together in this; if it happens to one of us today, it may happen to another tomorrow!
Non-racist
Katutura