POPCRU welcomes the ground-breaking sentencing of the racist Vicky Momberg 

29 March 2018

The Police and Prisons Civil Rights Union (POPCRU) welcomes the two-year jail sentence handed down to Vicky Momberg for her racist flare-up towards a policeman back in 2016, after she had repudiated to accept his help after her smash-and-grab ordeal in Johannesburg, using the k-word 48 times and claiming that the calibre of black people in Johannesburg was low.

The degradation of blacks in particular through different expression of racism is not a new phenomenon, and we should preoccupy our minds with the real factors that this sort of attitude manifests itself since the preaching of reconciliation is clearly insufficient enough to end the plague of racism in our country and beyond.

This judgement is particularly significant because, since the advent of our democratic breakthrough, it is the first known case where someone is being imprisoned for utilising the racist word in our country, and we are reassured by the fact that the current response is taking practical measures to fight it, and not just to leave it hanging on the spotlight from time to time.

For us to combat racism, we need to dismantle its structure in particular and white supremacy in general.

We are of the view that the largely uneven economic disparities that are prevalent in our country arguably lie at the core of these racial conflicts because for racism to occur, it requires for the racist to have power to adversely affect the entire racial group he or she disdains, and apartheid has achieved precisely that. As it stands, black people do not hold that power to affect any group adversely, even in our current situation where blacks are the face of government and political power base.

Whites remain unaffected or adversely impacted upon by the opinions and attitudes of black people towards them. In this sense, racism is a power struggle, and the only way to disavow it is through economic power as political power is not enough to change society.

We cannot deal with racism without having a clear understanding of its relation to economic power.

We urge all peace loving people of our country to stand up against racism.

Issued by Richard Mamabolo, Media and Communications Officer, 29 March 2018