The Apartheid Legacy of Brutality Lingers on in Our Armed Forces
1 April 2020
The country is now on what is popularly known as lockdown due to the Covid-19. Necessary as this desperate measure is, it has also exposed the deep seated deficiency in our country’s armed forces: the persisting legacy of apartheid brutality 26 years into our constitutional democracy. If our country bears the imprints and birth marks of its apartheid past, the SANDF and SAPS have become a shining example in this regard. They have illuminated this legacy of apartheid brutality with aplomb.
The great irony of this legacy in the current crisis humanity faces is that black people again are the victims of its brutality. What is even more concerning as a paradox is that the corona virus was brought into the country by the selfish and privileged white elite that had travelled abroad to risky countries and came back to the country without declaring where they had travelled. They came through the OR Tambo and Cape Town International Airports, travelled to such destinations as KwaZulu Natal, Western Cape, Eastern Cape etc, whilst mingling with other people thus putting all our lives in danger.
Our security forces – the SANDF and SAPS – have been deployed to enforce the lockdown in terms of the regulations announced by government. The constant refrain from our officialdom whenever the army is deployed, is that the army is not like the police, they ‘skop and donor’. This translated to me that whenever the army is deployed, they have a licence to brutalise black people.
This logic has become the modus operandi of our army in our townships and elsewhere where black people live. Black people are kicked around, punched, whipped and made to perform some of the most degrading and dehumanising acts reserved only for subhumans. Our townships are slowly resembling the state of emergency declared by Pik Botha in the 80’s. Black people have now become the scapegoat in realising anger for the virus that was brought into the country by the privileged white elite.