Friday 3 July 2020
Abahlali baseMjondolo Press Statement

Minister Sisulu is Playing Dirty Politics with our Lives & Dignity

If you are poor and black your life does not count to the government. Your dignity can be vandalised at any time. Your home can be destroyed at any time. You can be humiliated, robbed, assaulted and murdered by the police, the anti-land invasion units, private security or the army.

It is assumed that you are beneath the law, and that law enforcement and the state as a whole are above the law. Unless we go to court the law is not applied to us. We are evicted all the time in violation of the law but there are no consequences for the people who give the orders to attacks us, or the people who carry out those orders. We can be humiliated, robbed, assaulted, tortured and murdered with impunity. If we try to open a case against a police officer or government official at a police station we are most likely to be insulted and chased away. We might also be assaulted. 

This reality is our daily bread. This reality is often ignored by the elites. It is taken as something normal.

Just as the video of the police murder of George Floyd shocked the world the video of the eviction of Bulelani Qolani in eThembeni, near Empolweni, in Khayelitsha has shocked South Africa. It spread like a wild fire.

What happened to Bulelani was not just illegal. His humanity was vandalised by the state.

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Minister Sisulu is Playing Dirty Politics with our Lives & Dignity