Tutu foundation laments deaths of Khosa, Floyd
THE Desmond and Leah Tutu Legacy Foundation has joine the global chorus for justice following the deaths of George Floyd in the US and Collins Khosa from Gauteng.
The death of Floyd, who was seen on video gasping for breath as a white Minneapolis police officer knelt on his neck, has sparked outrage and protests across the US and further afield, including the US embassies in Berlin and London.
Closer to home, on April 10 Khosa was assaulted at his Alexandra home, allegedly by members of the armed forces for allegedly contravening the lockdown rules by drinking alcohol in his yard.A postmortem report indicated that he died of blunt-force trauma to the head.
In a statement, the Desmond and Leah Tutu Legacy Foundation said the “distasteful truth” linking the deaths of Khosa and Floyd at the hands of security forces in South Africa and the US was that the lives of certain people in society were considered more precious than others.
“Floyd’s last words – ‘I can’t breathe’ – as he was suffocated under the knee of Minneapolis policeman Derek Chauvin last week, speak for billions of human beings who are fundamentally disempowered because they are poor, because they are black, because they are women, because they are gay, because they are of ‘other’ faiths, because they are defenceless… because they fall on the wrong side of their society’s power divide, the systemic inequality gap.
“Khosa died at the end of March, soon after being strangled, slammed against a wall and hit with the butt of a machine gun by South African soldiers over-zealously enforcing Covid-19 lockdown regulations, his family said. The soldiers involved in the incident have been cleared by a defence force inquiry, but a police investigation is ongoing,” the foundation said.
While condemning the looting and destruction of property during protests in the US, the foundation said the Covid-19 pandemic sweeping the globe was a summoning call for collective action and a new kind of leadership with the courage to focus on sustaining humanity and the Earth.
“If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor,” Tutu said.