At the height of a frigid Cape Town winter, an innocent black man was forcefully expelled from his home by law enforcement that was blatantly apathetic towards their victim’s well-being and dignity.
While the brute force employed against Bulelani Qolani, a Khayelitsha resident, generated outrage across social media, such an episode is sadly a routine demonstration of police practice in South Africa today.
In the United States, there are clear links between the slave patrols empowered to enforce slavery laws and the development of law enforcement practices more generally. In southern states, the rationale for the creation of a police force was to preserve the system of enslaving black bodies as a source of free economic labour.
The reality in South Africa today is that law enforcement implements different tactics in different suburbs: neighbourhoods with black-majority populations typically experience ongoing brutality at the hands of police, as in the many cases of forceful evictions and mass arrest sprees that seek out black non-nationals without identification, demanded on the spot. Selling goods on the street, or “loitering” in these areas seem cause for a heavy-handed police response.
Indeed, as the Constitutional Court in 2011 affirmed, the term “land invader” “detracts from the humanity of the occupiers… and comes close to criminalising the[m].” Similarly, the suspension of some officers involved in the killing of Collins Khosa here in South Africa was only initiated after the family was forced to obtain a High Court order to initiate an investigation. Despite the court having ample evidence and eyewitnesses to the brutal attack on Khosa, the State still opposed any accountability for the officers in its response to the family’s court application.
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