man violates the rights of another black man, nobody cares. It happens so often that it has become a way of life. But when a white man violates a black man, brouhaha breaks out.”
The incompetence of the South African police force combined with the willingness of magistrates and judges to grant bail have depleted faith in the criminal justice system. Vigilante mob violence in South Africa has become informal sharia law – so routine that it doesn’ t even make the front pages: black South Africans brutally execute their own on the basis of rumour, often with the complicit passivity of the police. If a mob of white South Africans killed a black South African, it would be front-page news, police officers would suddenly experience an attack of diligence and arrests would be made amid a furore about the need to eliminate racism.
Why is black-on-black slavery, exploitation, torture and oppression in Africa routinely accepted amid an inordinate focus on crimes and exploitation committed by whites?
The legacy of European colonialism and South Africa’ s apartheid policy understandably generated a suspicious focus on the conduct and motives of Western nations and whites – unfortunately to the exclusion of more relevant contemporary realities. White people constitute approximately 9 % of South Africa’ s population and 1 % of Africa’ s population: they punch above their weight economically on account of the legacy of privilege bestowed on them by colonialism and apartheid, but they hold no political power and no longer control the fate of African countries, so fixating on them does little to improve the quality of life on our beloved continent.
Perspective: Africa- September 2016
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In South Africa which has the continent’ s largest number of whites, the rising level of frustration with poverty and crime is expressing itself in irrational, often racially charged tangents that can only poison the country further backward.
Whites are now feeling targeted by the ruling African National Congress which blames apartheid for the nation’ s persistent racial and class inequality rather than focusing on its own failures and what is possible in the here and now. Racist whites, drowning in media reports about corruption and assorted chicanery, cry“ I told you blacks can’ t run the country,” and some react with defiantly vile outbursts on social media, while progressive whites feel helpless to positively influence the outcome of events.
Instead of focusing on the thieves in government who are stealing their futures, we are now seeing an obsessive, militant focus on“ whiteness” and the symbols of colonialism and apartheid among black“ bornfree” university students. Black South African students are focusing their energy and militancy on demanding the removal of statues of dead white racists and land thieves which will have zero impact on the quality of African lives in the 21st century; they also want free tertiary education, despite the massive deficiencies in South Africa’ s basic education system which is supposed to serve everyone – not just those bright enough to get into university.
University of Cape Town professor of sociology, Xolela Mangcu, recounted his acute embarrassment at participating on a panel with progressive visiting academics from the University of California, Berkeley. Bullying black students physically got in his face and“ hurled insults at the panel-