Last week, pupils at Effingham Secondary School in Durban held a protest – intended to be peaceful – against alleged racism in the school. A fight seems to have broken out between two Grade 12 girls that escalated, resulting in the school calling in security and the police. Social media was awash with videos showing an ADT security guard, assisted by a metro policeman, dragging a girl pupil as she tried to break free.
This is why, during #FeesMustFall, white students, knowing the privilege they had, were often put at the front of the protests as a protective band of sorts. The students, both black and white, knew that without this they were likely to incur brutality from the police. The phenomenon made local and international headlines as we grappled with the latent assertion that white lives were of a higher value than black lives.
How come the article glibly skims over the race of the perpetrators of all this supposed racism?
If BLACK LIVES MATTERed in South Africa the Minister for Transport would be much more aggressive about minibus taxi safety.