Apartheid crimes still happening in broad daylight 27 years later

August might be the month to commemorate a brave action by an estimated 20 000 women who protested against apartheid pass laws on 9 August, 1956 but it’s also the month that the ANC led democratic government gets haunted by its own post-1994 massacres.

On Thursday, some people in the country commemorated the shooting, allegedly by police, of Nathaniel Julies, 16, in Eldorado Park.

Julies had been walking in the street like all children his age.

His apparent sin was allegedly failing to respond to police officers who questioned him after he had gone to buy biscuits at a local shop.

An apparently trigger-happy police officer ended his life there and then with a bullet. But a year after he was shot, the trial for the officer in question is yet to start.

When the post-democracy police shot and killed activist and community leader Andries Tatane in Ficksburg in the Free State on 13 April, 2011, it sent shock waves through the country and the world as being the first fatal police action since 1994.

But the same world was to stand even more aghast after the mowing down of 34 mineworkers at Marikana, near Rustenburg, 16 months later.

The difference between these police shootings and the apartheid massacres at Sharpeville in 1960, in Soweto in 1976, and others in the ’80s is nothing but a different time and era.

Otherwise, the taking of an the innocent life, be it under apartheid or a democratic system, is the same..Impunity of state institutions involved in criminal matters, be it ordinary crime or state corruption, has become the norm.

When Tatane was murdered in broad daylight at close range by a volley of police rubber bullets, eight officers were arrested and charged.

But over 10 years later, none of them are in jail.

Today, nobody talks about this brave leader who wanted the best for his impoverished community while the previously accused officers Nicodemus Israel Moiloa, Jonas Skosana, Mothusi Magano, Mphonyana Ntaje, Olebogeng Mphirime, Solomon Moeketsi, Kanathasen Munsamay and Isaac Finger have been acquitted.

They could not be identified as they had been wearing police helmets during the shooting.

Political commentator Pule Monama, former leader of the Azanian People’s Organisation, said people were promised a better life that had not materialised.

Meanwhile, ActionSA has stepped forward to assist the Julies family with attorneys to ensure the matter will be properly prosecuted.

The leadership, under Herman Mashaba, visited the family as part of commemoration and a show of sympathy yesterday.

– ericn@citizen.co.za