I think that it's pretty much accepted in most of the advanced English-speaking world that "All Lives Matter" is a way of saying "Black Lives Really Don't Matter". But most of the people with that mindset cannot see its inherent racism and think they are not racist.
The attitudes of Boeta Dippenaar and Pat Symcox come as no surprise to those of us who have spent considerable time in South Africa.
Dippenaar was only 17 when Apartheid ended, but he is an Afrikaaner - they tended to be much more prejudiced than English-speaking whites - and he attended Hansie Cronje's Alma Mater - Grey College in Bloemfontein. I've been to Bloemfontein - it's a town where five times as many people speak Afrikaans and attitudes are still stuck very much in the "we built this country and now the savages are killing our farmers" line of thought.
Symcox is different. He's an English-speaking South African - although he grew up in Kimberley - and he has been a successful businessman in Natal, where the population is a mix of Zulus, Indians and English-speaking whites. But he is from an older generation: Dippenaar only experienced Apartheid until the age of 17, whereas Symcox chose to live under it until the age of 34, whereas many of his peers who were sickened by it moved to England or Australia or New Zealand.
So we are talking about people whose own origins and early upbringing have left them with views which remain mainstream for their social groups (Dippenaar as an Afrikaaner educated under Apartheid, and Symcox as an English-speaking South African who benefitted from Apartheid until the age of 34).
They almost certainly both view themselves as liberal and progressive - and compared with their parents' generation they are. But their views are rather sad consequences of their upbringing, just like if you speak to white Americans from the Deep South who were born before 1945 they tend to have quite shocking views too.
It's pointless to argue whether they are or are not racist. We just need to recognize that Dippenaar and Symcox are the past and that they need to be ignored.
