The People’s Dialogue leader and former mayor of Johannesburg Herman Mashaba was among many who this week criticised the ANC’s response to the Black Lives Matter (BLM) campaign in the United States.
Mashaba called it the “worst form of hypocrisy”.
The came after the ANC’s deputy general-secretary, Jessie Duarte, announced that President Cyril Ramaphosa would lead the party and its alliance partners in a “Black Friday” anti-racism campaign on Friday at 7pm.
“Last night I watched Jessie Duarte announcing the ANC’s call for all South Africans to support the BLM campaign in solidarity with the people of the US and George Floyd,” said. Mashaba.
“When I was campaigning in the run-up to the 2016 local government elections, I remember asking myself what poor black people did to the ANC to deserve the treatment that has been meted out to them. This is why I find the ANC’s response to the BLM campaign to be the worst form of hypocrisy,” Mashaba said in a statement on Friday.
The former mayor said that the question that emerged from the matter was why South Africans were being called upon by government to offer support from abroad, when the South African government had “killed poor black people with callous disregard for decades”?
“Where is our sense of community and justice and where is our resolve to remove any government that tramples upon our far harder won freedoms?
“One thing we should have learnt by now is that the world is not going to care when we ourselves demonstrate no sense of outrage,” he said.
Mashaba continued: “The ANC of today that is asking us to join the US in solidarity with George Floyd and the BLM campaign is the same ANC that has demonstrated time and time again that, in South Africa, too often black lives don’t matter.”
He said that although the BLM campaign was important, the issue was that the South African government had shown nothing but brutal disregard for the lives of its poor black citizens.
“I find it insulting to be told by the ANC that this is a cause that we should unite around when it is the ANC that has perpetrated abuses against black people in South Africa at unprecedented scales,” he said.
The People’s Dialogue leader called on the ANC and Ramaphosa to organise the planned launch of Black Friday around the “callous” disregard for the value of South African lives, and especially those of poor black South Africans.
“I will leave you with this thought: What would have happened in America if just one of Marikana, Life Esidimeni, HIV/AIDs denialism, or Lily Mine had happened to their people?” he asked.
United Democratic Movement president Bantu Holomisa also gave his opinion on the matter along with the African Christian Democratic Party (ACDP), highlighting people who had been killed by the state’s security forces.
“ANC and allies to take a stand against racism and police brutality on Black Friday. Stand against your government? Who are you fooling? Who is responsible for the killings of [Collins] Khoza, [Andries] Tatani [sic], Marikana workers. Police are being sued billions as we speak,” Holomisa said on Twitter.