Juneteenth and Apartheid
Slavery. Apartheid. We prefer not to talk about it.
I thought of mama when on 17 June 2021, President Biden signed a bill that made the 19th of June a federal holiday, to commemorate the end of slavery and what happened in Texas on that day in 1865.
Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation to free slaves in 1863, but in Texas, they only heard about it on 19 June 1865. Slaves called it Juneteenth, which is the abbreviation for 19 June.
America, a capitalist country, did not have labor costs because it had slaves it sold like animals in places like the Slave Market in Atlanta Georgia. Lava hot hatred for the black form led to lynching, posting human parts on ‘southern trees’ as Nina Simone sings in Strange Fruit.
SOUTH AFRICA
In apartheid South Africa, the Queen of England and the Dutch took the land through the barrel of the gun and the Bible. Like America, they had to dehumanize first then exploit African labor. Every South African gold and diamond mine, railroad, farm, game reserve, prison, factory, white suburb, white school and church drips with the blood of African men.
After Juneteenth, black men in the south were thrown in prison for charges like ‘vagrancy’ and other racist reasons: camouflage for breathing while black.
In South Africa, African men were jailed for not carrying their passes (permits), or for being in a white area after dark. They were sent to prison farms owned by white farmers, including judges and prosecutors.
African men died on these farms and were buried right there. There was a time when Africans learned that some prisoners were buried in potato farms. They mounted a potato boycott, ‘awa-dliwa’ meaning we won’t eat them.
There’s no space to chronicle cruelty in gold and diamond mines. Prisons were for Africans and many died there. Steven Bantu Biko, was tortured to death in detention. He is one of the architects of the Black Consciousness Movement (BCM) which was the only vehicle for fighting apartheid, when the June 16, 1976 Soweto Student Uprising happened. The state killed Biko on 12 September 1977.
Slavery. Apartheid. We don’t want to talk about it. Playoffs, Twitter followers or Naomi Osaka are more palatable. To be honest though, grandparents also don’t like talking about it.
It was only after mama’s passing that I realized how inhumane apartheid was to her. She never talked about it. I asked. She smiled and never gave me answers. She was a live-in maid in white homes most of her life. She wanted better for me. She sent me to university.
Which means that although African Americans have Juneteenth, there are many stories in the basement of memory.
This is another ‘written podcast’ by Nonqaba waka Msimang.
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