Johannesburg - Chris Hart, an investment strategist at a South African unit of Standard Bank Group, has resigned after his suspension in January following comments on Twitter.
Hart said the victims of apartheid are “increasing along with a sense of entitlement and hatred towards minorities”.
Read: Chris Hart quits after tweet row
The statement caused a backlash on Twitter from people calling him a racist and urging clients of Johannesburg-based Standard Bank to boycott the lender.
Hart later apologised in a Twitter post, saying that he didn’t intend to cause offence and that his comments were meant to be read in the context of a slowing economy.
Standard Bank said his earlier statements were “factually incorrect, make inappropriate assumptions about South Africa and have racist undertones”.
Standard Bank announced the resignation in an emailed statement without commenting further.
A week after Hart’s suspension in January, Sim Tshabalala, Standard Bank’s joint chief executive officer, sent a message to staff and said persistent racial inequality and racism were a risk to South Africa’s stability and its economic growth.
While South Africa’s black middle class has grown since the end of apartheid in 1994, black people on average still earn six times less than their white counterparts, according to the statistics agency.
Government policies to promote black people in Africa’s second-biggest economy have mostly helped a small group join the elite in one of the world’s most unequal countries.
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* It's Anti-Racism Week in South Africa. Join the conversation at stopracism.iol.co.za .