How Africa has had to battle pandemic
For advanced economies dealing with economic disruptions from the coronavirus pandemic, the response of choice has been huge stimulus packages. Africa is doing without them.
Hundreds of demonstrators, among them SA students, turned out in the historic university town of Oxford in Britain on Wednesday to protest against the killing of George Floyd, an AfricanAmerican man, by a white US police officer.
The UK chapter of activist group Black Lives Matter organised the rally as people across the globe gathered in solidarity with US protesters who have taken to the streets. This was since a video went viral of Floyd begging for mercy as the officer knelt on his neck for more than eight minutes. US President Donald Trump has been accused of fanning the flames by deploying the US national guard.
In a peaceful park, with the gleaming spires of Britain’s oldest university in the background, an eclectic mix of people of all races, nationalities and ages, turned out to stand against institutional racism and injustice. They were clad in masks in a country that has seen the most deaths in Europe from Covid-19.
“Black people are subject to antiblack racism across the globe including in a majority black country like SA,” said Nomfundo Ramalekana, a law student from Nelspruit, explaining why she was attending.
South Africans at the rally said they had been following the news from home closely and were dismayed by state violence during SA’s lockdown, which has led to several deaths, including that of Collins Khoza at the hands of the army.
“I wasn’t surprised [about Khoza],” Ramalekana said. “We know what happened in Marikana, so I think no South African is surprised about excessive use of force.”
Jabu Nala-Hartley, daughter of a Durban, KwaZulu-Natal, trade unionist who has been living in the UK since the 1980s and is running for local council in Oxford, concurred.
“The death of George Floyd resonates, it reminds me of apartheid, it reminds me of the injustice of what we went through, it reminds me of all the things that we fought for ... and yet we’re back here, talking about the same issues,” said Nala-Hartley.
“It doesn’t mean that if you bring more black policemen things will change, black policemen are part of the system, black policemen have been trained by the same people who profile black people.
“During apartheid, black policemen were killing black people in SA. It’s about the system that condones this behaviour,” she added.
Simphiwe Laura Stewart grew up in Swaziland and studied in Pretoria before coming to Oxford to do her PhD in geography and environmental studies. She brought along her threeyear-old son Judah.
“We’re tired, we’re traumatised, we’re enraged, we’re radicalised. Enough is enough. We’re sick and tired of institutions of white supremacy,” she said, adding that police brutality against black people is not confined to the US.
“The number of people who have been killed by the SA National Defence Force and the SA police is atrocious, especially during this lockdown period,” Stewart said.
“It’s particularly damning for a postapartheid, democratic SA to be securitising the state and also to be meting out the same violence that the apartheid government meted out on black people.”
Stewart’s son was born in the US to a US father, and she expressed her fear for her son’s future as a black man.
“I am worried for my son,” she said. “I’m angry, I’m scared.”
WE KNOW WHAT HAPPENED IN MARIKANA, SO NO SOUTH AFRICAN IS SURPRISED ABOUT EXCESSIVE USE OF FORCE
Bartlett is German press agency Africa correspondent based in Johannesburg. She is on a journalism fellowship at the University of Oxford.