“I Can’t Breathe,” Says Africa
Ever since I saw the video of the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis, Minnesota, on the 25th May, killed by a police man who knelt on his neck for NINE MINUTES, while he was calling for his dead mother and for mercy, I have been upset and angry, as have been most people across the world and amongst different races. I ‘ve been watching the riots in the USA and all over the world and wondering whether this will pass by as just another of these events, or whether change really is on the horizon.
We know this systemic racism started four centuries ago and, through endless and varied legal and political processes, was designed to benefit one section of a society. All other systems are subservient to this system and all other people are subservient to a race, a large number of whom are fighting to keep the privelege they feel is rightfully theirs.
I also see the knee on George Floyd’s neck as also being symbolic of how neoliberalism, and the associated neo colonialism, are putting their knee on the neck of Africa. I hear Africa saying, ‘I can’t breathe.’