Then there was Marikana . . .

The police killed black people in Sharpeville. The police killed black people in Marikana. The police kill black people. The murder of black people by police is dramatic and in your face. The murder of black people by their circumstances is a different matter - one we all wish we could avoid or postpone for another day, for someone else.

The bickering about corruption and service delivery; the rape and murder of women and children; the seemingly random murder - these are the things black life is made of. In the greater scheme of things, even the dramatic and public murder of black people on our TV screens, it's all but a flash of time. Life carries on. Come to think of it, if life was to stop every time there's a murder or rape or abuse or any other form of atrocity visited on a black life, life in the black world would stand still and never move. These horrible things are the things that define being black. Of course, those with the privilege of being outside the circle of black life get to "wonder how this can be?" 

Explanations and analyses and reports and opinions are always on offer. About "these people". These people who are not us - who are not of us. The privilege of being outside the black zone is that life moves on unless punctuated by some aberration. Rape, murder, random violence are not the stuff life is about outside the black zone. When these get to visit the normal non-black zone, it is an aberration, it is something that bears some explanation. "Normal people" do not do such things - the things of the black zone. There's always disagreement about the solutions or even appropriate actions. How can it not be? There's even disagreement about what it is that happened, is happening, will always happen. 

Outside the black zone there are normal people who live and act normally. The normal that is expected of those who live in the black zone. The normal stuff like food, space, health, fun, laughter and an odd tear here and there. The black zone is over there, not here. Never mind police brutality, how about life brutality. Imagine, because that's all you can do, imagine brutality being the word to describe your life. The brutality of poverty, marginalisation and animal-ization of people, human beings. This in the black zone is the normal. Here life is so low people look up just to see the bottom. Which rights do the humans in the black zone have?

Are they even human? Human rights are for humans.

We wait for the upheaval. We wait for the forces that will throw us into each other's shoes. The forces that will bring the flow of raw sewer to the suburbs and serenity of quiet family life to the squatter camps. It is easy to avoid what we don't see; refuse to see; avoid seeing. The value of property trumps that of human life. But then again, that life we talk about, must be human first. 

All this as we speak of "celebrating" Human Rights Day and forget Sharpeville Day. But Sharpeville Day refuses to go away, it keeps coming back.