"I can't breathe!", get white knee off black's necks - Zanu PF knee has crash 30 k lives and counting W Mukori

The death of George Floyd is a significant milestone in the black Americans’ long struggle of justice and equality. It was a seminal moment that has forced the many Americans, mostly the privileged whites,  who have turned a blind eye to the institutionalised discrimination, oppression and racism; to take a long and hard look of the real America in its ugliness.

America’s founding father accepted the premise that “all men are created equal” and yet accepted the reality of slavery, the very antithesis of equality, amongst their midst. It was to take another 100 years before Abraham Lincoln abolished slavery with the passing of the 13th Amendment to the American constitution in January 1865.

The 13th Amendment abolished slavery and guaranteed the blacks “equality before the law” but that did not stop the passing of the Jim Crow Laws, laws and practices that enforced racial segregation and discrimination, for the purpose of deny blacks their political and economic rights and gave the perpetrated impunity. It is no exaggeration to say George Floyd was a victim of the Jim Crow Laws.

Four white Minneapolis, United States Police Officers, wrestled George Floyd, whose hands they had handcuffed behind his back, to the ground. One Officer planted his knee on George’s neck whilst the other two held George down and the fourth Officer kept concerned members of public away.

The white Officers had his knee on George’s neck for an agonising 8 minutes 46 seconds! The last thing George said was “I can’t breathe!” before the knee sealed shut out his windpipe! No one, absolutely no one should ever have to be so ill-treated and killed. No one! And yet there are countless such tragic stories of black Americans, victims of the Jim Crow laws and practices.

"That's a long time (8 minutes 46 seconds)," Reverend Al Sharpton, a Black human rights activist, eulogised Floyd on Thursday in Minneapolis.

"There's no excuse. They had enough time; they had enough time!

"George Floyd's story has been the story of Black folks. Because ever since 401 years ago, the reason we could never be who we wanted and dreamed to be is you (whites supremacist system) kept your knee on our neck. It's time for us to stand up in George's name and say, 'Get your knee off our necks!'"

The story of oppression and exploitation of one race by another, one tribe by another, one nation by another and even one brother by another is as old as history and as common as weed. It is therefore not surprising that there have been many public sympathy and anger at the ugly injustice George Floyd suffered not only in the USA but in many other countries across the globe.

There have been many public demonstrations in UK, Canada, Europe, Australia and many democratic countries in support of the demonstrations in USA but, more significantly, to remind the local powers-that-be of the respective nation’s own unfinished Jim Crow laws and practices.

The response to the George Floyd story and the angry USA public outcry of Zimbabwe, China and many other countries whose human rights record is a hell-lot worse than that of the USA was to claim for themselves moral high ground.

“The truth is the West does not really care about human rights, especially the human rights of African-Americans and Africans; it just cares about preaching about human rights and striding the world stage with hypocritical pride and a pompous air. For, if it really did care, at all, America would not be witnessing nationwide protests today and its fellow "first world" nations would not be so silent about it,” Tafi Mhaka in Al Jazeera.

“Minority and migrant communities face more socioeconomic precarity, inadequate healthcare, shorter life spans, and higher incarceration rates than white Americans. Yet the response of the US government to these systemic problems has been to increase policing, not to try to resolve them. 

“Large numbers of minority voters, particularly African-Americans and Latinos, have also struggled to participate in national elections and have their voice heard on the political scene. Voter suppression in these communities is rife and certain political forces have continued block efforts to enfranchise these voters.”

Tafi, short for Tafiranyika, Shona for “We are dying for the country”, Mhaka is a Johannesburg-based social and political commentator, “who takes a keen interest in African affairs, with special focus on Zimbabwe and Southern Africa”, we are told. Tafi has a BA Honours degree from the University of Cape Town. Sadly, just another case of someone with Honours degree but devoid of common sense!

If Tafi had any common sense then he would not be comparing the economic hardships black Americans are facing to those the overwhelming majority of Zimbabweans are facing! Talk of inadequate healthcare in America when healthcare in Zimbabwe has all but totally collapsed.

Yes, some blacks and minorities have been denied a meaningful vote but that is nothing compared to the blatant vote rigging and use of violence the Zimbabwean voters have been subjected to.

If the black Americans were to be forced to live under the same economic and political conditions existing in Zimbabwe today of course Reverend Al Sharpton, his fellow Black American human rights activists would not see that as regression. And rightly so too!  

“Yet the American megaphone diplomacy in Africa has always insisted on free and fair elections and brandished the American system as a model to follow,” continued the brain-dead Tafi.

Zimbabwe, like so many other African countries has failed to hold free, fair and credible elections and this is the root cause of Zimbabwe’s economic meltdown and political paralysis. And, per se, holding free, fair and credible elections is the cure for all our economic and political problems. Only someone who is brain-dead would reject the cure just because America and the west have themselves failed to live up to the full ideals and potential of democracy!

Even if George Floyd does result in very significant democratic changes in America, Africa’s despots and their apologists will continue to take his barbaric death as definitive proof democracy has failed and American must never again preach good governance to them.

Before independence, we in Africa had to fight to end white colonial exploitation and oppression. Since independence, we have been fighting to end black on black oppression by corrupt and incompetent ruling elite and their dim-witted black apologists and acolytes.

The tyrants are condemning the barbaric murder of George Floyd, but they are only paying lip service. Inwardly they are pleased, they have a case to hide their own barbarism. To establish and retain this de facto one-party dictatorship, Zanu PF has murdered over 30 000 innocent Zimbabweans for political gain.  

Oppression, in whatever nature and form, is a pernicious afront to human dignity and humanity itself.

Still, when it is oppression is by brother, black on black – so far blacks are the only ones who have done this with sickening regularity in modern human history – such behaviour leaves one cold. Worse still, that anyone much less a fellow black would be cheering and applauding the corrupt and oppressive tyrants!

'Get your knee off our necks!’ Reverend Al Sharpton, here in Africa, it is the black tyrants who are crashing the hopes, dreams and very lives out of millions of fellow blacks!