A Black Agenda Radio commentary by executive editor Glen Ford The conviction of eight Black South African policemen in the grizzly murder of a Black cab driver represents a break from the culture of impunity that surrounds the cops. South Africa’s police are deeply implicated in government corruption, political assassinations of poor people’s and labor organizers, riots against foreign workers, and the massacre of 34 miners, at Marikana, three years ago.
A Rare Conviction of Killer Cops in South Africa A Black Agenda Radio commentary by executive editor Glen Ford A South African court found eight Black policemen guilty of murdering a Mozambican taxi driver by handcuffing him to a police van and dragging him two hundred yards behind the vehicle. Then, the cops beat the already badly injured man to death at the police station.
A cell phone camera video of the dragging of the victim, Mido Macia, went viral on the internet, back in February of 2013. The grizzly crime is reminiscent of the murder of James Byrd, Jr., by three white racists in Jasper, Texas, in 1998. Byrd was tied to a pickup truck by his ankles and dragged three miles to his death on a country road. One of the Texas racists was executed.
The murder convictions of the eight South African police are unusual – as they would be in the United States – because South African cops also operate under a culture of impunity. Just six months before Mido Macia was killed by cops in the city of Daveyton , east of Johannesburg, police massacred 34 workers on strike against a platinum mine at Marikana, ushering in a new phase of opposition to the increasingly corrupt and brutal African National Congress regime. Those killings were also caught on camera, but none of the cops has been punished, and a government commission of inquiry into the August 2012 Marikana bloodbath concludes only that the police acted on a “defective” plan, but that they murdered no one.
“Political assassinations of labor and poor people’s organizers are common.”
South African police are as feared, today, as under the apartheid regime that slipped into history in 1994. And, just as under white rule, the main victims of police violence are the poor and powerless. The South African police now serve the Black-led ruling party, the ANC. Therefore, not only do they protect the interests of the wealthy corporations that still dominate the economic life of the nation, the police are also the enforcers of the African National Congress’s public services patronage system. The ruling party’s critics say desperately needed housing, utilities and other government services are distributed on the basis of loyalty to the ANC. This has contributed to South Africa being widely described as the “protest capital of the world ,” with the highest levels and frequency of protests – thousands of demonstrations every month, most of them involving demands for housing and other basic services.
Political assassinations of labor and poor people’s organizers are common, in South Africa. Many activists suspect the police are directly implicated in the killings and cover-ups. In recent years, the police have often tolerated or encouraged mob attacks against Africans from elsewhere in the continent, especially Zimbabweans and workers from neighboring Mozambique, like Mr. Macia, the murdered taxi cab driver. The violence against African foreigners is a sad irony, since not so long ago the white regime considered all Black people in South Africa to be foreigners, with no rights of citizenship and no protection from civilian or police violence.
For Black Agenda Radio, I’m Glen Ford. On the web, go to BlackAgendaReport.com.
It is imperative for independent journalism to serve as the media arm of a movement that opposes the privatization of information and works toward the development of a public media apparatus.
British colonial officials turned their guns on women in two Nigerian towns in the 1920s, to put down protests against “head” taxes and levies on market stalls, killing scores.
Ethiopians struggle to forge a national consciousness that supersedes ethnic tribalism, while international human rights NGOs discuss their "responsibility to protect" them, writes Ann Garriso
“Ain’t no power like the power of the people— ‘cause the power of the people don’t stop!” bouncing off summer skyscrapers; ricocheting off resistance
Why is more effort is put into trying to discredit CCOP, while the ruling class is pulling all stops to hoodwink the public with actual reformism, like the George Floyd Act.
