STATEMENT BY SAM SHABANE, GOOD NATIONAL CHAIRPERSON
30 August 2020
The killing by police of an unarmed child in Eldorado Park is yet another tragic reminder of the fact that some lives are considered more important than others in South Africa.
The fact that 16-year-old Nathaniel Julies had Down’s Syndrome makes his murder doubly shocking and repulsive.
It is impossible to imagine the police behaving so brutally and with such impunity if Eldorado Park was a historically white area… just as the death of Collins Khosa at the hands of soldiers at the beginning of lockdown wouldn’t have occurred had he lived on the other side of the highway instead of in Alexandra.
The perpetrators of these unconscionable acts of brutality are not necessarily racists, themselves, but their actions betray systemic prejudice in our society.
The lives of the people of Eldorado Park and Alexandra matter no more or less than the lives of people living in Sandton or Randburg.
A society in which, depending where they live, disabled children are vulnerable to being gunned down by police, is not the equal society for which so many South Africans struggled and paid with their freedom and their lives.