|
Ban Firearms in South Africa
By Mpumelelo Toyise
Too many images broadcast to the
world about our country are of horrific incidents of
violent crime.
Contrary to widely propagated beliefs
it is the majority, poor and black people, who mainly
fall prey to this sickening level of terror. It is
mainly women and children who are the face of these
gruesome images. The survivors are direct victims, for
example, due to rape, or indirect victims, such as
widows and orphans. It has been said that any offence
that touches women and children is the deepest invasion
and intrusion of the family, the nation and humanity. In
accepting a patriarchal order of society, this
observation concludes that there are no more men to
protect those we consider vulnerable and dear in our
society. Our society is on its knees, begging for mercy
at the hands of terrorists that have hijacked our
freedom.
This situation cannot be accepted as
inevitable for as the society we wield much more
power than we recognise and admit. We bear some
responsibility for creating an enabling environment for
this kind of terrorism to flourish. We raise the
would-be criminals, manufacture the arms and abuse our
freedoms, setting the scene for the terrorist to take
over. There is no credible need for the small arms
industry to exist and for civilians to own guns. There
is no evidence that crime will flourish in a gun-free
society. The recent hullabaloo over tighter gun control
legislation leaves one wondering whether we are really
committed to a less violent environment where we can
raise our children and prosper. Formerly legal guns, now
turned illegal, are ravaging our country. Legal gun
owners are also responsible for violent crimes like the
growing number of femicides and family killings.
We are seeing those who can be part
of the legalised private arms race opting for the
illegal route. When one person buys a firearm, his
neighbour wants to buy a bigger and better gun, causing
an escalation to the uncontrollable levels we now
witness. Before the upswing of political violence in the
80s and 90s, the majority of our people felt they stood
a better chance to survive and tell the story of a
violent encounter. It was easier to escape from or fend
off knife-wielding thugs, even without a weapon. Thugs
would molest and manhandle but rarely would they kill,
compared to current encounters. You were safer behind a
physical barrier like a car or burglar door.
Hospital records show a higher
survival rate for assaults by knobkerries or knives than
those by guns. Now the criminals reign supreme
because they don't need to within your reach or to
overcome a physical barrier to injure and kill you. One
reason that thugs have grown more deadly is to counter
the likelihood that their victim might be armed with a
gun. Their natural response is to shoot first to
eliminate that possibility.
In the past nobody would dare parade
a gun, even if legally owned. In black communities
people owning a gun, or rumoured to own one, invited all
kinds of interest and police harassment. This kind of
attention and oddness of a black person owning a gun
facilitated easier operations for crime intelligence.
Gun owners were very careful to the extent that even in
their drunkenness they would not dare talk about, let
alone show off, their guns. There were no guns ringing
all night long; only the silence of the night and
soldiers' footsteps were a cause for fear.
The eighties brought the unruly Self
Defence Units and the returning cadres from the older
section of the exiled liberation movement, both
notorious for using the necklace, the black curse of the
20th Century. In this era Inkatha's notorious brigades
emerged, with the backing of the apartheid state and
security agencies. All hell broke loose; arms of every
description and calibre were available in the ensuing
race to terrorise the black community. As Steve Biko
said, every black soul was alone.
Some felt they had to be armed to
survive the terror unleashed by all these groups. Some
misguidedly believed that they were fighting a just
cause that necessarily limited itself to burning schools
and maiming the black community. That culture of
misguided violence was to remain with the black
community, and simply broadened in scope and coverage
after 1994 to venture into formerly white suburban
areas.
Fanon talked about what he called a
Manichaean world where the native responded to the
absolute violence of the settler. The problem with our
country is that this violent response was arrested at
its infancy, when it was driven by spontaneity and not
political consciousness.
As such, with the ushering in of the
democratic government, this violence, which had already
begun to acquire criminal rather than political
content, simply flourished and was exacerbated
by massive inflow of mainly illegal immigrants which
came with its own violent baggage. Except for few
countries that successfully managed the disarmament
process after decolonisation, the greater part of Africa
was labouring under the violent strife of civil
war—sponsored by western and former colonial powers.
In Mozambique and Angola, RENAMO and
UNITA respectively, waged genocide. Even Zimbabwe, which
managed disarmament far relatively well, was subject to
remnants of ZAPU that refused to surrender their arms
after defeat of the settler. The resulting civil strife
could have destroyed that nation.
Within this context at various stages
in our history, there have been calls and resolutions at
multilateral forums to ban and eradicate the small arms
trade, particular in Africa, where the history of
instability and civil wars owes its origins solely to
the small arms proliferation. Whilst the context of the
proliferation was understandable within the context of
the liberation struggle against colonialism, there can
be no justification to the existence of the small arms
industry or trade in modern Africa.
Arms in decolonised societies have
done little else but destabilise the new democracies and
nation states. They have undermined their capacity to
bring peace and order, a condition necessary for
transformation and development. The only beneficiaries
of arms trade and disorder, in whatever guise, have been
western powers that continue to plunder and stifle
growth and development of the new economies.
Two sectors of society allow the
status quo to remain. The lumpen-proletariat is defined
in the Communist Manifesto as “that sector of the
population that, having been denied a legitimate way to
make a living, resorts to the illegitimate”. This class,
especially in its unorganised form, has constituted a
politically and morally weak class, easily manipulated
into subversive action both during the liberation
struggle and after, wherever it has not been properly
conscientised.
The neo-colonial settler is either
pessimistic about the new nation state or actively
campaigning against it, and what better way to achieve
this if not by mobilising anarchy and profiteering from
it by crime? There can be no telling as to the extent to
which these forces are undermining the stability of the
new nation state. The refusal, mainly by a section of
the white community, to disarm or at least submit to
tighter gun control, must be seen as a vote of no
confidence against the new nation state and instead an
agitation for a Wild West society where only anarchy
survives.
The Azanian People’s Organisation (AZAPO)
believes that our country should have implemented a full
disarmament programme and calls for disarmament of the
civilian population. The armed forces must carry guns
only during working hours, not in public, and should
leave those arms in safe storage as soon as they knock
off.
In addition, we must as citizens
waive some of our civil liberties for a while to allow
the security forces to comb our country for any arms
that might be left. Once that is done we will know that
anyone carrying a gun is committing a crime and we will
be empowered to blow the whistle. We should not have the
situation where police are afraid to respond to
emergency calls and leave us to our own devices.
Mpumelelo Toyise is a trade
unionist, anti-gun campaigner and politician. He is a
member of the Azanian People’s Organisation, founded as
the Black Consciousness Movement by Steven Bantu Biko. toyisem@gam.co.za
posted 15 October 2006
* * *
* *
* *
* * *
|
Sister Citizen: Shame, Stereotypes, and Black Women in
America
By Melissa V.
Harris-Perry
According to the
author, this society has historically exerted
considerable pressure on black females to fit into one
of a handful of stereotypes, primarily, the Mammy, the
Matriarch or the Jezebel. The selfless
Mammy’s behavior is marked by a slavish devotion to
white folks’ domestic concerns, often at the expense of
those of her own family’s needs. By contrast, the
relatively-hedonistic Jezebel is a sexually-insatiable
temptress. And the Matriarch is generally thought of as
an emasculating figure who denigrates black men, ala the
characters Sapphire and Aunt Esther on the television
shows Amos and Andy and Sanford and Son, respectively.
Professor Perry
points out how the propagation of these harmful myths
have served the mainstream culture well. For instance,
the Mammy suggests that it is almost second nature for
black females to feel a maternal instinct towards
Caucasian babies.
As for the source
of the Jezebel, black women had no control over their
own bodies during slavery given that they were being
auctioned off and bred to maximize profits. Nonetheless,
it was in the interest of plantation owners to propagate
the lie that sisters were sluts inclined to mate
indiscriminately.
|
 |
* *
* * *
 |
Sex at the Margins
Migration, Labour Markets and the Rescue Industry
By Laura María Agustín
This book explodes several myths: that selling sex is completely different from any other kind of work, that migrants who sell sex are passive victims and that the multitude of people out to save them are without self-interest. Laura Agustín makes a passionate case against these stereotypes, arguing that the label 'trafficked' does not accurately describe migrants' lives and that the 'rescue industry' serves to disempower them. Based on extensive research amongst both migrants who sell sex and social helpers, Sex at the Margins provides a radically different analysis. Frequently, says Agustin, migrants make rational choices to travel and work in the sex industry, and although they are treated like a marginalised group they form part of the dynamic global economy. Both powerful and controversial, this book is essential reading for all those who want to understand the increasingly important relationship between sex markets, migration and the desire for social justice. "Sex at the Margins rips apart distinctions between migrants, service work and sexual labour and reveals the utter complexity of the contemporary sex industry. This book is set to be a trailblazer in the study of sexuality."—Lisa Adkins, University of London |
* * * * *
The White Masters of the
World
From
The World and Africa, 1965
By W. E. B. Du Bois
W. E. B. Du Bois’
Arraignment and Indictment of White Civilization
(Fletcher)
* *
* * *
Ancient African Nations
* * * * *
If you like this page consider making a donation
* * * * *
Negro Digest /
Black World
Browse all issues
1950
1960
1965
1970
1975
1980
1985
1990
1995
2000
____ 2005
Enjoy!
* * * * *
The Death of Emmett Till by Bob Dylan
/
The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll
/
Only a Pawn in Their Game
Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson Thanks America for
Slavery /
George Jackson /
Hurricane Carter
* *
* * *
The Journal of Negro History issues at Project Gutenberg
The
Haitian Declaration of Independence 1804
/
January 1, 1804 -- The Founding of
Haiti
* * * * *
* *
* * *
ChickenBones Store
(Books, DVDs, Music, and more)
update 29 December 2011
|
