Remembering the Soweto uprisings 33 years ago remains important as the dreams of equity and justice in a new post-apartheid South Africa remains elusive for the majority. Pambazuka News has two features this week on the importance of the uprisings in today’s South Africa.
Blackwash [a new initiative committed to black consciousness in post-1994 South Africa] writes an open letter to South Africa’s Black youth. Reading through this article I get the feeling that the Black youth being addressed are male. There is no reference to women nor to the crimes against women particularly rape and that many rapes are committed by young men – see the video “Corrective Rape“. Yesterday’s I posted a survey on rape in South Africa which found that one in 4 men had raped. Surey addressing the issue of violence against women is an essential aspect of Black consciousness?
Anti-Apartheid activist, Mphutlane wa Bofelo, questions why “considers why ‘former freedom fighters can sometimes be more vicious in attempts to abort freedom” as residents of a squatter camp prepare a class action suit against the government for decent housing.
How is it possible that we have arrived at the point where people take a people’s government to court for such basic things as water and housing, which the constitution fully enshrines? Just recently a South African court ruled in favour of the people for their right to water. Guess who took the people to the appeal court to try and overturn the decision of a judge who is probably inherited from apartheid era? The appeal court ruled in favour of the people. Guess who is thinking of appealing the decision through the constitutional court? Who stood against the decision of the victims of the apartheid-capitalism to take the big corporates that benefited from this system to the international court? Who? Who killed Biko and Hani and Solomon Mahlangu and Hector Peterson and Muntu ka Myeza and Masabata lwate and many others? The Boers and their vigilantes only killed the flesh. The spirit of Mahlangu, Biko, Hani, Peterson, lwate is being killed here and now by us. The Boers failed to kill Biko and Hani. We are succeeding where apartheid-capitalism failed. We kill the spirit of Tambo and Biko everyday. We hate each other. We kill each other. We rape our children . We burn our grandmothers. We love beautiful things for ourselves but ask our brothers and sisters to endure conditions such as Kenville squatter camp. for them Rome will be built in zilion years, for us it takes only one day in office as a CEO, counsellor, director, business big-shot to relocate from Zamdela to Vaalpark and from Mofolo to Hougton.
