As a child growing up in Apartheid, watching constant police brutality, all black and brown people knew never to trust the police or to run to them when you needed help. We knew to run from them.
To run away, not because we were guilty of anything but even as children we knew something about the colour of our skin, set off the “animal,” the beast in them.
“I can’t breathe!”
“I am unarmed!”
“I am not resisting!”
“Please don’t shoot me!”
And so much more cries is not enough for those that have been given a licence to kill black people.
Whilst a burly white policeman’s heavy knee is on the most vulnerable part of a black person’s body (the neck), there is a cold, almost dead look in the policeman’s eyes.
I wish I could say it’s only the policeman kneeling on #GeorgeFloyds neck until he was killed but it isn’t.
#CollinsKhosa killed because he drank a beer in his own house during the lockdown.
The emotionless, deadpan, often sadistic look in their eyes is enough evidence that they are not there to serve and protect but to maim and kill.
How many more black bodies have to be scraped off the pavement like roadkill before white people start feeling more than outrage from the comfort of their couches?
How many times do we have to stand by the graveside and bury people because they were prematurely gunned down by the ones that “protect and serve?”
How many more protests do we have to have for white people to be motivated enough to not only speak out but stand up?
How many more times do we, as black and brown people the world over have to stare at an empty chair at the dinner table because a family member is no longer with us? A child grows up without a father? A mother loses her life; a man gets killed in Alexandra in his home for having a beer.
How many more stories do we have to tell and how much more pain do we have to reveal for white people to come out en masse and shout, “STOP, this isn’t right!”
As a white person your inaction, your sympathy, your tears mean nothing when you aren’t willing to get up, slap on that sunscreen, place on the sunhat, grab a placard, and protest. Protest without it benefiting you. Protest because it’s the right thing to do.
Those police officers and army personnel tasked with “protecting” have a family. Are you, as a member of their family or one of their friends congratulating them for murdering another black person or rebuking and vilifying them?
Silence is consent!
Don’t wait for interest convergence, for it to benefit you to spur you into action.
Understand that racism was started by your people and only you can put an end to this brutality. If of course, you choose to do so or keep sympathizing with us every time our people are maimed or killed by “legitimate” killers.
Black lives matter!
Stop the genocide of black people!
