Statement on the Police Killing of Karabo Chaka

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Abahlali baseMjondolo press statement

Statement on the Police Killing of Karabo Chaka

3 August 2023

On Monday 31 July, a road blockade – the strike of the poor – was organised by residents of the Slovo Park settlement in the south of Johannesburg to demand that the City keep its promises, and adhere to its legal obligations. The protestors blocked the N12 highway for more than six hours. The police responded with violence, taking the life of Karabo Chaka (16).

Karabo Chaka was shot dead by the police while in the yard of his family home in the Slovo Park. We would like to express our deepest condolences to his family and all who knew and loved him. We would also like to express our solidarity with the Slovo Park community.

Karabo Chaka was shot dead by the police

The Slovo Park community has been engaging the City of Johannesburg for thirty years, often assisted by progressive lawyers and policy experts like the Socio-Economic Rights Institute (SERI) and Comrade Professor Marie Huchzermeyer. In 2016, the High Court ordered the City of Johannesburg to upgrade the settlement however this has not happened, and in the seven years since then a number of children have died due to falling into pit latrines or coming into contact with live electricity cables. A political party, a state and a society that leave children to die are an insult to the humanity and dignity of the poor.

We have also experienced police killings during protests. On 30 September 2013 Nqobile Nzuza (17) was shot dead by the police in Cato Crest, Durban, during a protest. Like Karabo Chaka she was shot in the back of the head. On 29 May 2017 Baby Jayden Khoza (two weeks old) died after inhaling tear gas when police attacked the Foreman Road settlement in Durban when protestors fleeing a police attack on the road took refuge in the settlement. On 29 July 2021 Zamekile Shangase (33) was shot dead by the police in Asiyindawo, Lamontville, after people began to protest the stealing of their food by the police in a ‘show your receipt’ raid.

All across the country impoverished communities risk death when they take to the streets, and it has been many years since it was reported that more than a hundred people had been killed by the police during protests. This figure did not include the lives lost during the strike at Marikana.

In the United States and France huge numbers of people take to the streets to protest against police murders and killings. Here there is mostly silence. There are no mass protests. The lives of poor black people do not count to this society. The contempt for our lives and dignity is pervasive.

A state that murders its people has no right to rule. We are confronting a brutal state that vandalises the lives of the poor and then rules us with violence. Bheki Cele runs a police force that is a clear and present danger to poor black people, a police force that is only good at killing and violating the poor. It is a fact that people live in fear of the police.

Even when the poor only cry for basic services such as water and sanitation – basic necessities – their cry is met with violent repression. Of course our struggle for land and dignity is also repressed with assassinations by the izinkabi. As everyone knows 25 lives have been lost during the course of our struggle.

The ANC impoverishes us and then manages our impoverishment with violence from the police, land invasion units, private security companies and izinkabi. They are our enemy, the enemy of every real democrat and every person who believes in the equality of all human beings and the value of all human lives. A party that runs a government that regularly murders poor and working class people, including the Marikana massacre and the murders by the police and army during the Covid lockdowns, is the enemy of the people.

It is time that we all stop complaining about how the ANC steals from us, impoverishes us and rules us with an iron fist. We must get rid of it. We need to organise, build popular democratic power, build a political instrument for that popular democratic power and build a peaceful society in which every life matters.

The lives and dignity of the poor cannot tolerate the ANC a moment longer.

Thapelo Mohapi 084 576 5117
Mqaphelo Bonono 073 067 3274
Zandile Nsibande 073 611 8279