The response we have witnessed in the aftermath of George Floyd’s killing in the United States is a reflection of pent-up feelings of frustration at the persistence of racism and that black lives have not mattered in that country.
That is the view of former President Thabo Mbeki, who was in conversation with the SABC’s Sherwin Bryce-Pease. Mbeki indicated an urgent need for the criminal justice system in the U.S. to be reformed and reaffirmed that the problem of the colour line, first given prominence by American Pan-Africanist WEB du Bois in 1900, remained a challenge in the 21st Century.
Mbeki says the visual of George Floyd’s last moments, face-down on a street in Minneapolis with a white policeman’s knee on his neck as the life drained from his body, brought back memories of Apartheid.
“For us as South Africans and black South Africans it really was a recall back to the Apartheid years because that kind of behaviour of white police officers against black people in South Africa was normal, was standard. It was a reflection of this very deep-seated white superiority notion that black lives don’t matter, that in fact these black people are subhuman, you could treat them anyhow. When I saw that video of that police officer with his knee on Floyd’s neck it immediately recalled that, that here we have an expression of the same kind of problem, the same kind of challenge which resulted in our case of some many people getting killed by white police officers because the attitude was these people are subhuman.”
He suggested that the process of globalization had perpetuated elements of Apartheid’s gross unfairness, including a discriminatory political and socio-economic international order – one that continued to illuminate the problem of the colour line.
“The global society has not been changed and been transformed in a manner that the colour line ceases to be a problem. It’s persistent in the same way I suppose, I’m quite certain, that you’ve seen racism persist in US, the same way you see racism persist in SA. So I think that observation of the problem of the 20th Century, the problem of the colour line, it remains a problem of the 21st Century.”
He noted the mass turnout in protests of the white majority in the United States in a show of solidarity that had been visibly lacking in years past, but also explained that the 244 year-old democracy had some lessons that South Africa, a younger version should learn from.
“We should not, never assume that the matter of the eradication of racism in our society is a matter that is very simple that can be done in a limited short periods of time. I think the persistence of racism in the US after the abolition of slavery, after the civil war and all of that, the emancipation declaration, human rights struggle, Martin Luther King Jr and all of those struggles, civil rights legislation, voting and all those interventions, that despite all of that you still have racism manifesting itself in the way that it does, I think it communicates a message that even for us here in SA we need to have a very close look at this matter when our constitution says we must produce a non-racial SA. Now how do we respond to that challenge, it’s a constitutional challenge, it’s part of a national compacts when we all agreed on the constitution we said yes we all agree there must be a non-racial SA but I’m saying that the example of the US it says to us this racism is very stubborn.”
Uprooting racism was – he added – something that should involve everyone, doing meaningful things that produce results, a real national project with international implications
In the video below in the conversation between Former President Mbeki and SABC News
