Published in Business Day.

The Rot Exceeds the Question of Corruption

Richard Pithouse

Day after day, and year after year, the news in South Africa carries reports of people declaring that they are not animals. A migrant at the fundamentally corrupt and abusive ‘reception centre’ in Marabastad, Pretoria, says that “They treat us like a dog, they don’t do right. They just want money.” A report on an even more abusive prison in Bloemfontein notes that a leaked video shows an inmate shouting “No! I am not a donkey” before being injected with anti-psychotic drugs. People making their lives in shacks repeatedly declare that they are ‘living like pigs in the mud’, or that ‘we live like rats’. When the police open fire on a road blockade, or hurl teargas into a shack settlement, people are often say that they have been treated ‘like dogs’. Continue reading →