Did Collins Khosa slip in the shower too?
Apartheid policing’s notorious excuse for the excessive force that led to deaths in detention is in effect being rolled out today
A reasonable person could conclude that there is a thirst in our security services for the blood of poor, black South Africans
● “I can’t breathe.”
These are some of the last recorded words of a 46-year-old African-American man, George Floyd, of Minneapolis in the US, as a police officer pinned him to the hard road by placing his knee and full body weight on Floyd’s neck.
After a few minutes of pleading with the officer and his colleagues to release him and let him stand, the handcuffed, unarmed Floyd can be seen in the bloodcurdling video eventually lying motionless. He was pronounced dead on arrival at hospital.
A much more undignified and cruel death is hard to imagine.
Seeing the life being snuffed out of Floyd in that terrible manner got me thinking back to an interview I did last year with visiting US luminaries who included Dr Julius Garvey, son of the great Marcus Garvey.
Garvey was in SA on a programme called Door of Our Return (DOOR), which is about encouraging African-Americans to retrace their roots and reconnect with Africa and resettle on this continent, if they so wish.
The pain of seeing fellow Africans being abused in the way Floyd was triggered a response in me that said perhaps our governments should actively encourage and even assist those African-Americans who would be keen to resettle on the continent of their ancestors.
For a brief moment, I felt like a true pan-Africanist. For a brief moment, I could hear Marcus Garvey’s voice: “Africa for the Africans.”
And then reality hit me like a ton of bricks. We can’t breathe here, either! Poor black South Africans are under the crushing knee and full weight of a state machinery that can now legitimately be compared to its counterpart in the US for its penchant for killing black people. And don’t drag me down the path of “not all police officers/ soldiers”. Not today.
We can’t breathe, and it’s not the weight of a white Minneapolis officer and his three accomplices squeezing the life out of us.
We can’t breathe, and it’s not apartheid ministers Jimmy Kruger, John Vorster or Adriaan Vlok who have us under their boot.
We can’t breathe, and it’s the full weight of a systemic culture of violence in the South African Police Service (SAPS) and the South African National Defence Force (SANDF), fanned by their political principals who tell them it’s OK to “skop, skiet en donner” black South Africans in villages and townships, especially if they “provoke you”.
Show me a member of any other demographic in this country that’s been stripped of their dignity by being made to do frog-jump exercises or roll on the ground as punishment for violating lockdown regulations, and I will retract my statement.
Show me another demographic whose protests to demand the promised “better life for all” they have been waiting for — for a quarter of a century — are not received by the archetypal bureaucrat, emerging from his air-conditioned office to promise to
“look into your issues”. They are instead almost invariably met by a volley of rubber bullets, accompanied by teargas and the traumatising soundtrack of stun grenades.
A reasonable person could conclude that there is a thirst in our (in) security services for the blood of poor, black South Africans.
That thirst was recently quenched with the blood of Collins Khosa.
Condemnation “in the strongest possible terms”, as the defence minister said after the incident, has happened.
We’ve also had the usual “strengthening of regulations” that happened the last time this thirst for blood was quenched — with the blood of 34 mineworkers on that koppie in Marikana. Regulations have been issued to guide the police and military on how to conduct themselves around the civilians they are meant to know how to serve and protect.
The thirst has been quenched … for now. But I think there’ll be another session, and the blood spilt will again be that of one or more poor, black South Africans. The reason is simple: impunity.
Take the SANDF board of inquiry’s report into Khosa’s killing, for example. A more ridiculous document I have not read since we were spun a fable about a firepool and a chicken run.
The inquiry was conducted by top brass in the defence force, who, in their “quest for truth”, interviewed the SANDF, SAPS and Joburg metro police officers who were at the scene the day Khosa was killed in April.
Apparently, none of these Sherlocks thought they needed to interview the Khosa family or any witnesses other than their own comrades in arms. The result is a report they may as well have saved ink by summing up: “Collins Khosa: cause of death, slipped in the shower.”
Why not? It really is on the same scale of ridiculousness to suggest that Khosa was only “pushed and clapped”, and died of “blunt-force head injury”, but had no injuries that were related to his cause of death. What about the blunt-force head injury? Say what we became accustomed to in this country during the apartheid years.
Say it! He slipped in the shower, fell, hit his head on the floor and died.
Instead of a credible investigation by a board of inquiry led by decorated brigadier generals and colonels, we have here a glimpse into the defence the accused officers will present should a criminal investigation lead to a trial. That defence, disguised as a “board of inquiry report”, reads: “He was disrespecting women soldiers, so we pushed and clapped him around. He was fine when we left. Then he died of blunt-force head injury that has nothing to do with our pushing and clapping.”
This is what they call on US crime TV the “some other dude did it” defence. Some other dude inflicted blunt-force trauma to the head of the man we had earlier pushed and clapped for disrespecting women. Some other dude killed him after we had set him straight on gender inequality.
After all, Riah Phiyega, the police commissioner at the time, told us after Marikana in 2012: “What happened represents the best of responsible policing.” This was while the smoking barrels of the police R5 rifles were still hot from mowing down striking mineworkers.
If their actions, as found by the subsequent commission of inquiry, were an aberration, you’d have expected that some of them would be in prison, right? Well, curb your enthusiasm! We’re not that kind of country. We had an inquiry, promised to improve public order policing training and tighten command and control, and fired Phiyega. What more do you want?
Collins Khosa? He slipped in the shower. As did Petrus Miggels, the Ravensmead, Cape Town, man who died after he was allegedly assaulted by police at the start of the lockdown.
As did the 10 other people allegedly killed while police were “enforcing” the lockdown.
We’ve lived through this before. They all fell in the shower and died.
The only detail missing is either police minister Bheki Cele or defence minister Nosiviwe Mapisa-Nqakula telling us, “Khosa’s death leaves me cold.”