Do we devalue black lives in South Africa?
We may have a black government, but police kill poor black people at a terrifying rate
THE murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis has sent a wave of grief and anger around the world. The US was built on African slavery and indigenous genocide and remains a fundamentally racist country.
As the great African-American academic Cornell West has pointed out, the system of electoral politics in the US has been unable to achieve the sort of reforms that could finally put an end to even the crude racism of the police. As West points out, the election of a black president did not end the pervasive racism of the American police.
But the protests that have erupted across the country have re-ignited the Black Lives Matter movement, and given real hope that popular rebellion will achieve what electoral politics has failed to do.
When Black Lives Matter became a powerful force after the uprising in Ferguson in August 2014, people who claimed leadership on the basis of a social media presence were soon co-opted by NGOs and foundations and the movement lost the source of its real power – popular rebellion.
Hopefully lessons have been learnt and this time the movement will insist that its real power comes from, and should remain, on the streets.
It’s wonderful to see people around the world, including here in South Africa, expressing support for the struggle against systemic racism in the US. But America is not the only country in which black people are regularly subject to police harassment, violence and murder.
The situation is at least as bad in
Brazil and Palestine. In South Africa we may have a black government but the police kill poor black people at a terrifying rate. A few weeks into the coronavirus lockdown at least 12 people had been killed by the police during lockdown operations.
A number of people have asked why South Africans are generally unconcerned about the regularity and impunity with which the police here murder unarmed poor black people.
Often the same people grieved and outraged by what happens in the US are silent when poor black people are killed by the police here at home.
Surely the affirmation that black lives matter should include the lives of black people in South Africa? Surely we should know, after the Obama presidency, that having black people in political power does not necessarily reform racist systems?
During Obama’s term in office, police violence against black people in the US, the mass incarceration of black and Latino people, and drone strikes around the world continued unabated.
After the Ferguson uprising in 2014, Angela Davis, the brilliant African-American activist and academic, pointed out that there were clear links between the oppression of black people in the US and Palestinians.
She noted that the Israeli state, a deeply racist institution, was training and equipping American police officers.
She also noted that during the Ferguson uprising, activists in Palestine were sharing advice on social media about how to deal with teargas and other forms of police violence.
Davis advanced an internationalist position in which we should be in solidarity with the oppressed everywhere, from Gaza to Ferguson.
This is an impressively principled form of politics that carries a real moral authority.
But while huge numbers of South Africans respond with righteous outrage when the police kill another innocent person in the US, and there is a small but vibrant South African movement in support of Palestine, South Africans generally do not take racialised forms of state violence at home seriously.
The reasons for this are not entirely clear. Have we perhaps internalised a colonial devaluation of the lives of our own people? Or is this a question of a residual faith in the ANC, despite its long record of violence, including lethal violence, against poor black people?
Is it because our public sphere is dominated by the middle classes but it is largely poor people who are murdered by the police, usually with impunity?
Whatever the reason for the general lack of outrage at lethal forms of state violence in South Africa, we cannot continue to claim any sort of moral high ground when police murders of our own people pass without comment.
It simply makes no sense for us to be outraged by police murders in the US but silent on the regular police murders at home.
With far-right-wing presidents in office in the US, India, Brazil, Australia, Hungary and elsewhere, and the global economy set to collapse into a depression as bad as or worse than the Great Depression of the 1930s, these are depressing times. In these difficult times the rebellion sweeping the US is a real beacon of hope.
It’s inspiring to see so many people in South Africa following and supporting that rebellion. But if we want to be true to its spirit we should be opposed to all forms of racist and racialised police violence – from the US to Brazil to Palestine, and here at home in South Africa.
If Donald Trump, Jair Bolsonaro or Benjamin Netanyahu ever have the audacity to visit South Africa, we should take to the streets in our tens of thousands to shut their visit down.
But we should also be expressing the same outrage at Bheki Cele, and every other politician who supports or fails to condemn the pervasive police violence against poor black people in South Africa.
If we could bring all the anger that we feel about the situation in the US home, we would have a real chance of being able to start to reform policing at home. And reform is urgently needed. It is, literally, a matter of life and death.
Buccus is senior research associate at the Auwal Socio-Economic Research Institute, research fellow at the School of Social Sciences at UKZN and academic director of a university study programme abroad on political transformation.
THE reaction of the stakeholders in education to the reopening of schools yesterday left much to be desired and seems to be lacking in good faith.
Since the announcement of schools reopening, the reactions have been largely negative, contrarian and not solution-oriented. With schools closed more than two months ago, the Department of Education, in trying to salvage what is left of the 2020 academic year, saw it fit to opt for a phased-in reopening wherein grades 7 and 12 would be the first grades to return to school.
The other grades would make a gradual return. For all intents and purposes, this seems like a reasonable and careful approach in the light of the imperative to maintain a healthy balance between health and safety concerns and the need for teaching and learning to take place.
In response to the initiative to reopen schools, teacher unions and school governing body associations have questioned the state of readiness of schools, citing the non-delivery of personal protective equipment (PPE), the lack of water and sanitation at some schools, lack of cleanliness, etc.
Health and safety risks for both pupils and teachers were cited as reasons why schools could not and should not reopen. The unions and governing bodies justify their reluctance to return to school on the basis of a concern for the best interest of the children. In a joint statement they cited Section 28(2) of the Constitution which provides that the best interest of children were paramount in every matter concerning children. “We do not believe it to be in the best interest of the children to return to schools when we know that uncertainty concerning their health and safety reigns,” their statement read.
Complete avoidance of human contact is the only absolute guarantee against infection. Since this is almost impossible, a balance has to be struck between such lives and livelihoods. There needs to be a common understanding that children have to go back to schools at some stage and teachers have to go back to earn their livelihoods.
It would be expected that the stakeholders in education would seek to bring to the table solutioninspired proposals to ensure that a semblance of normality is achieved. However, such an attitude has been woefully lacking from both teacher unions and parent associations. It would seem that these major stakeholders have abdicated the role of normalising the education situation to government.
In a spectacular shifting of the goalposts, the unions further slide into a technical argument when they decry the fact that teachers have not been provided with the amended curriculum. They assert that “no teacher should be expected to work in the “dark” and no pupil should be taught inappropriate content”. It would seem unions are looking for a blueprint before they can agree to their members going back to work.
What they fail to realise is that the government does not possess a magic wand to wave away all the challenges brought by Covid-19. As the venerable Barney Mthombothi avers, “there is currently no international convention or protocol on how to deal with the disease or minimise its impact. All countries are feeling their way in the dark, each learning on the hop by observing the mistakes and blunders – and some minor successes – of those who have already gone or are going through the wringer”.
Given the historical injustices of the past, it is obvious which schools will be left behind should a staggered approach to schools reopening be followed.
This we cannot allow no matter the justification. In a sophist attempt to halt the scheduled reopening, the incompetence of the governing ANC is acknowledged while also trying to point a finger at the apartheid legacy for the current education shortcomings.
Many workers are in dire straits having received no salary since the beginning of the lockdown. One wonders what the reaction of the unions would be if teachers have their salaries stopped or reduced. I guess this would not be well received and probably lead to them taking to the streets with no care in the world for physical distancing.
Lee is a social commentator with a keen interest in educational and political issues, Voices360.com.