Fighting the scourge of racism

Opinion

Sifelani Tsiko ---
A major controversy has arisen over the latest racism incident in which two South African white men forced a black man into a coffin and threatening to set him on fire.

This incident sparked protects and elicited commentaries in virtually every major newspaper inside South Africa and across Africa and the entire world.

The principal responsibility for this nasty incident lies squarely on the two accused, Willem Oosthuizen and Theo Martins Jackson who are now being held in custody until further trial.

The two white men stand as a big symbol of deeply entrenched white racism both here on the African soil and worldwide.

Racism in South Africa is "entrenched and alarming" and Willem and Theo are simply the unflinching look of the horrific face of inhumanity bred from racism.

They are just unrepentant and I feel strongly that legislation against racism on its own has not been deterrent enough.

This latest racism exhibit must force Africans to confront racist whites boldly and tackle their prejudices and preconceptions about race, discrimination and violence.

My stomach contracted and I felt a deep chill in every pore of my black skin when I saw the 20 - second video which was widely circulated on social media, showing the victim, Victor Rethabile, cowering inside a coffin as one man pushes a lid on his head and the other threatens to put petrol and a snake inside the coffin.

The images show typical colonial behavior, the demeaning of black people, the insult of their humanity and the humiliation of the vanquished.

This is pure abuse and racial hatred and Africans must unreservedly condemn this racism without being apologetic in any way.

The abuse reflects the deep racism underlying racist white attitudes to blacks.

Numerous cases have been documented of racism both inside South Africa and elsewhere across the world on how whites ill- treat black people.

The US, is still the epicentre of racism against black people.

But this latest South African case will stand out only as a rare incident of exceptional violence and as a subtle and entrenched white supremacist project of dominating racially inferior peoples.

Those apologetic will say leave everything to courts.

But the fact still remains, the SA coffin abuse images are about white racism and nothing more.

Blacks here on the African soil and abroad should not be publicly reluctant to say so.

We should find the right words and get them into print just to show our anger.

If Victor Rethabile, was white and the perpetrators black, the mainstream international media would have gone in over-drive evoking emotions of racism and even to the extent of even pushing our leaders to roundly condemn the acts.

To CNN, BBC and the other mainstream international media, this could be seen as genocide!

The voices against the latest racial violence have been muted.

Only a few people have noted that the images remind them of apartheid South Africa abuse and police brutality of black people.

It is shameful that most of the blacks inside South Africa failed to really conceptualize our history and the continued subjugation of blacks

Centuries of racism, colonialism and misappropriated history have created a people who have very little concept of the history of their abuse.

They have simply grown detached from the struggle against white racism.

Really, should we hide behind unemployment and other social economic woes to let white racial violence go unchecked?

As blacks, despite our problems, we should desist from being a mere segment of humanity which is in a sense rootless, with no real understanding of its own historical experiences.

We should continue to uncover and unmask entrenched white racism which is still alive both inside South Africa, Zimbabwe and across the world.

We simply should not allow naked white racism violence to continue unabated in the face of our daily struggles, poverty and political torment that takes place here in Africa.

The legacy of slavery and colonialism and the awful brutalization of our people should be condemned in every possible way.

Violent racism is traumatic and has psychological implications on the minds of the populace.

It’s humiliating and it must be castigated by all well-meaning people.

Grim images of white racist violence has not only caused disgust and revulsion among black people worldwide, but has also made whites to lose the moral high ground that they claim to justify when castigating other countries and when they glowingly speak about human rights and democracy.

Blacks continue to face racism in many shapes and forms across the world.

They continue to suffer a daily existence of back - breaking labour, endless abuse and the subjugation of their religions and cultures.

We must not suffer quietly relentless white brutality.

We should not be docile subjects, but build new forms of resistance characterised using new media platforms to demonstrate our anger and other covert means to get the message to the perpetrators.

Outright protest, rebellion and escape still remains a plausible route in the wake of entrenched, subtle and naked acts of white racism.

It is quite insulting and offending that Willem Oosthuizen and Theo Martins Jackson don't know the difference between a corpse and a living human.

There are still locked in the colonial era arrogance that sees Africans as animals, which can be treated in any way the "baas" sees fit.

I don't think this kind of attitude, when done in reverse, would have been tolerated by ultra-sensitive whites in Europe.

This despicable act of violent racism needs to be condemned unreservedly for ridiculing black humanity.

Willem and Theo violent racism acts should be roundly condemned and greeted with scorn.

The two, join the discredited ranks of unrepentant white racists like PW Botha of South Africa and rebel Ian Smith of the Rhodesian era, who remained unrepentant throughout their lives and strongly believed in white supremacy.

Said Botha, ‘‘We do not pretend like other Whites that we like Blacks. The fact that, Blacks look like human beings and act like human beings do not necessarily make them sensible human beings. Hedgehogs are not porcupines and lizards are not crocodiles simply because they look alike.

“If God wanted us to be equal to the Blacks, he would have created us all of a uniform colour and intellect. But he created us differently: Whites, Blacks, Yellow, Rulers and the ruled.

“Intellectually, we are superior to the Blacks; that has been proven beyond any reasonable doubt over the years. I believe that the Afrikaner is an honest, God-fearing person, who has demonstrated practically the right way of being.’’

And this is the same mindset the two white South African men still have today.

All these racists have well documented “intelligence testing” utterances which invariably stacks the cards against individuals from an African cultural background.

Conditions in which black people lived during the colonial era were harsh and inhuman.

Despite the failures of our African governments, it is important to appreciate the nationalistic struggles and the social movements which sought to improve the living conditions of Africans on the continent in the 50s, 60s and through to the 1970s.

The younger generation will fail in its duty to develop the continent in future if it does not walk with history, self-confidence and faith in taking the old struggles to new and higher levels.

As Africans we need to have self-belief, faith and confidence in our own abilities to shape and influence their own destiny.

Lack of self-confidence and belief in being African will eclipse African pride and the African spirit which is struggling to awaken from the slumber of divisions, ravaged historical memory and a recollection starved of the African abilities and potential, one Pan African activist once observed.

Africa has its own problems — wars, hunger, poor leadership and governance, weak infrastructure and a whole chain of other problems. Is there a race or continent without problems?

The road to social and economic self-confidence will not be easy. Bringing African resources under African control and making sure the continent’s resources serve to uplift the majority of the poor on the continent is complex matter. But Africans have to pursue this struggle despite the challenges.

Ayi Kwei Armah, a renowned African writer and cultural researcher rightly sums it up in his article on the Berlin Consensus: “It will require a knowledgeable generation of conscious Africans, able to turn themselves into skilled organisers, and determined to keep working steadily until they reach their goal.”

A united Africa, home to a people that knows its history from the beginnings of recorded time, and which knows enough about its cultural resources to understand that in order to find the intellectual resources any society needs its future, it need not go cadging concepts from alien sources.

“What we have to do, to start with, is to remember our dismembered heritage.”

All this, can be powerful tools to fight the scourge of racism. -Zimpapers Syndication