Black lives matter, but some apparently more than others

It would be so great if all the black lives that matter – mattered equally. Sadly, they don’t.

There is a class or a form of grade to which black life or lives matter, where we should stop for a minute and observe a moment of silence or demonstrate at embassies or any building of significance.

We use hashtags and the country will even stand still for a few days.

Here in South Africa we recently lost the life of Collins Khosa due to the brutality of the army forces and police personnel and nobody declared a social media blackout or even a hashtag. Almost 10 years ago, 34 unarmed men were killed with live ammunition for mere demonstrating and crying out to be remunerated fairly.

The ANC didn’t declare a Black Friday to mark the killing of 34 poor black men in South Africa.

But, this past week they did so.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with acknowledging the brutality that is happening in America. However, what is very disturbing is that this creates a binary.

We don’t get to move and seek justice for every black life. We move when the West is affected.

We don’t make a lot of noise when there are xenophobic attacks in South Africa and fellow Africans are beaten, suffer brutality, or even killed. We also didn’t move and form movements when Andries Tatane was shot and killed by the police. We moved on like nothing tragic had happened to another black man.

I fully understand that that in some instances, incidents will occur under extraordinary circumstances that the media and the public will take note of. However, why weren’t the lives of 34 low-earning miners a symbol to a cause to say, enough is enough?

Why wasn’t the death of Andries Tatane a climax for our anger, and activation of the justice activists in all of us as people?

You know why?

Because black lives matter differently. Some of these black lives matter more than others, and that is the biggest societal problem we have at the moment.

To live in a country where the governing party keeps mum about the lives they are supposed to protect and speak on behalf of and goes as far as declaring a Black Friday for someone far from us is disturbing.

As I said before, there is absolutely nothing wrong with being in solidarity with other countries and the world at large. However, there is definitely a problem when we don’t treat these black lives equally.

We are a society of inconsistencies and a lot of injustices.

A good friend of mine tried to show me the other side of the news and hashtag agendas by saying: “I think it’s just how the cycle of agendas work. Every quarter has a thematic hashtag. Think back to #MeToo and #GBV. They were topical until something else happened and everyone fixates on the ‘new’ issue under scrutiny.”

I get that the news move and change. But I am still angry. 34 times angrier about the miners who lost their lives in Marikana, and my anger doubled because of what happened to Tatane and Khosa.

We should mobilise and stand against any killing of black, white or orange life, irrespective of status or class or race. As Nicholus Pule puts it: “These incidents activate my long-held view that the black race is a graded type. There are black lives that matter and there are those that do not matter at all.”

He further argues: “Your position within the black race hierarchy depends on how much you’ve assimilated the white culture and how civilised the environment you live in is. Those who are ranked at the top in this hierarchy are those whose black lives matter.”

May we stop grading black lives and act, mobilise, and seek justice for all black lives, particularly the lives of black boys and men.

Kabelo Chabalala is the founder and chairperson of the Young Men Movement (YMM), an organisation that focuses on the reconstruction of the socialisation of boys to create a new cohort of men. Email, kabelo03chabalala@gmail.com; Twitter, @KabeloJay; Facebook, Kabelo Chabalala

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