Visiting a whites-only town in South Africa was difficult. Even sadder was the racist backlash in the UK – The Guardian

I expected criticism of my documentary, but the racist trolling and support for an apartheid stronghold was truly awful
The morning after my most recent documentary, Whites Only: Ade’s Extremist Adventure, aired on Channel 4, I got a stream of concerned phone calls and WhatsApp messages from friends, family members and work colleagues, asking if I was OK. At first I was confused. It wasn’t until they started talking about social media that I understood why they were all so worried. I’d pretty much removed myself from X (formerly Twitter) a few months ago: it was just becoming a place of polarised conversations that made the platform toxic and close to unusable.
I knew there would be an extreme reaction to the documentary as sadly, the topic of race, especially in connection with South Africa, will probably always be provocative in our lifetime. In my documentary, I visit an all-white town called Orania in the central Karoo region of South Africa. The film is a pilot for a potential series where I would meet a whole range of extreme groups across the globe, including those attracting Black and Asian people. I wanted to understand why these people held such extreme views, what the consequences were, and what lessons could be learned. I also knew many of our viewers had never heard of Orania, so just seeing the town and its inhabitants for them would be a new experience.
Over the last 20 years, I have made or been involved in documentaries covering a wide range of topics, from exiled Cuban athletes to the illegal trade of exotic animals from the Amazon, where I wore a hidden camera and posed as a wealthy buyer. I was the first journalist in a wheelchair to travel to Mogadishu. In Mexico City, I was almost kidnapped and had to be evacuated by the police from my hotel room. I’ve accepted that this profession can be hazardous, but also feel lucky and privileged to be given access into the lives of some extremely fascinating people.
My style of film-making is to go into every issue, asking the question “why” in as many different ways as I can. Hopefully, I bring the viewers with me and we learn together. But I realise my method leaves me vulnerable and open to attack. This is par for the course for anyone in the public eye. But let’s be honest: if you’re a Black journalist, the level of abuse you can expect to receive on social media is horrific; add disability to the mix and it turns into a mindless anger fest.
The result: an online army of haters who criticise me for being me. People who can’t see beyond the colour of my skin, so anything I do or say will be wrong. I received comments like these:
“You know I’m actually glad a fucking racist like you is crippled.”

“Delusions of grandeur and ignorance to the fact he’s from an underdeveloped subspecies and way out of his depth.”

“Has anyone noticed the morphology on that black African? My gosh, he has extremely archaic features, very chimpanzee like …”, “they should have lashed him to a plough and put him to work.”
“I love how they not only they sent a negro, but a disabled one at that, just so they can farm as much outrage as possible.”

“Sounds like my perfect place! Free of Muslims and blacks. Maybe we can create areas like this in the UK … separate schools, shops, businesses etc etc sounds bliss.”
This is just a tiny snapshot of what was waiting for me.

I hope the mindless hatred I received online was just a noisy minority, and not the tip of a racist iceberg. But I do worry about the tone and leadership of our debate. Look at how long it took the UK government to call the Tory donor Frank Hester’s deeply offensive comments about the MP Diane Abbott racist. Or the fact that, a week later, the business secretary, Kemi Badenoch – having dubbed his comments racist – tried to minimise them: “This was something that happened five years ago … it wasn’t even really about Diane Abbott … This is trivia.” It makes me worry that if we don’t start to have proper, honest conversations about race, followed by actions that lead to tangible change in our society, racism will be constantly weaponised and used to divide us.
Some thought I should have gone in there guns blazing, a trigger-happy Black cowboy verbally shooting down every comment I disagreed with. But what is the point of that? In my view, when you make a documentary, you have to let people be heard, let them speak, and through that process, reveal their true selves, so the audience can make up its own mind. I could fight, shout, argue but all that does is polarise us more.
It wasn’t easy to be there in Orania, to be honest, but we wanted to stay and fulfil what we had set out to do, and not lose access on day one.
There was criticism, some here in the Guardian,and there was hate elsewhere, but there was also positivity, lots of it across Facebook, Instagram and X, as well as in some print media. That’s what I take heart from: ““I had no idea this place existed. It’s blown my mind,” was one tweet I received.
“Lordy, lord, that place is a cult-like construction site,” said another. “The prejudices and worldview of the adult population is disturbing enough, but the kids who grow up under the glass dome.Just wow.” “What an eye opener,” tweeted a third. “It’s like they’re stuck in some sort of weird apartheid timewarp. Well done for seeing it out.”
I know so many Black people in the UK are tired of talking about racism, not because they think it doesn’t exist but because it feels so embedded in society and progress is so slow. But this is exactly the reason why we have to keep pushing for change in whatever way we can.
Maybe in our own small way we have started a conversation, even among the online trolls. From what I’ve learned over the years, change begins with you and me at a dinner table, in a taxi or in our homes, having a conversation.
Ade Adepitan is a journalist and broadcaster. Whites Only: Ade’s Extremist Adventure is available to stream on Channel 4
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