Today I was part of a peaceful march to parliament to ask for government action against the recent afrophobic and xenophobic attacks that have been happening around South Africa. We were a group of about 20 students, and after gathering for about an hour a police brigade came and started pushing us away telling us we couldn’t be there (granted the SA system is fucked up enough already that you need a ‘permit’ simply to protest).
They then grabbed one of our protestors and pulled him to the ground and we all started shouting and trying to pull him back, next thing you know, 2 stun grenades go off??
It happened so quickly I was still half reaching over to grab our dude but I wasn’t sure if shots had gone off or what - my ears felt like they’d been ripped off and my body was frozen and my vision was way blurry.
Things calmed down we regathered and continued singing after a while. So the cops just brought more intimidation - eventually there were 11 police vehicles with an army of men in bulletproof vests??
We were 20 students singing outside parliament?? Literal no one was aggressive and no one had any form of weapon.
It’s just crazy for me how the police are supposedly here to protect us but they greeted us with such aggression, condescendence and force right from the beginning. Not to mention we’re asking the government to respond to the attacks that have been happening - where people from Africa have been burning alive other people from Africa. It’s fucked up and people don’t realise how constructed this all is. It all started with the fucking colonialists. How the power structures insidiously turn people against they’re own. How the statue looming over our protest outside parliament was of Louis Botha triumphantly atop his steed credited as “soldier, farmer, warrior” or some racist shit and then that the very police general who dropped those fucking stun grenades on our PEACEFUL gathering shares that same bloody name.
The legacy of colonialism and apartheid is still so deeply entrenched in the system we live in that if you merely question it you’re immediately condemned as vermin, or even in your existence you will be considered such and someone like me (ie white) won’t get that same reception??
This kind of a struggle is something people have to engage with everyday. People die over ‘illegal protests’ - what is that?? You’re expressing your pain and now it’s not legal??
Fuck.
And then people actually complain that we finally got the statue of Cecil fucking Rhodes taken down. Yoh this country is deep
