By Ntsako Shivambu
The solidarity shown by South Africans towards the protests in the United States has unfortunately been compared to the silence of the death in the hands of the police and soldiers of Collins Khosa and activists like Andries Tatane.
Everyone should be concerned of the death of civilians in the hands of law enforcement agencies and such cases should end with perpetrators jailed and serving time.
We should also not compare things that are unrelated – George Floyd’s death was racially motivated and driven by racial cleansing not police brutality as in the South African cases such as that of Khosa. The South African government has IPID and the military ombudsman who deal with complaints against police and soldiers.
The government has made it possible for people to seriously challenge brutality legally with ease unlike in the United States of America where the target of the police is mowing down African Americans or Black people in particular. It is no secret that the killer of Floyd wouldn’t have been charged, if people had not protested and demanded justice.
United States police are Black people hunters who murder Africans without provocation. The systematic racism in the United States has robbed many Africans of their lives without justice. Africans in solidarity with our brothers are well aware of not supporting those protests.
We must never reduce our solidarity to competition, let’s equally support the Khosa family in seeking justice for their son but in the same breath support and be in solidarity with our brothers in the diaspora.
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