IT WAS a quiet Sunday morning when young city gardener Muhammed Makungwa was hurrying to work in Cape Town’s southern suburbs when he became the victim of an astonishing attack. A motorist first tried to run him over before proceeding to beat him with a sjambok.
The 22-year-old gardener suffered deep wounds to the head and bruises to his body from the attack in broad daylight in the street. As it turned out, the motorist was accusing Makungwa of breaking into his vehicle.
Makungwa says the attack only ceased when his lunchbox fell out and his assailant realised the error of his ways.
Calls have now been made to urge Makungwa’s attacker to come forward and present himself to the police.
It would be easy to dismiss the attack on Makungwa as isolated had it not been for other incidents a few weeks ago in the same area. A woman was assaulted in an unprovoked attack in the street by a resident. In that case, she was accused of being a prostitute. A second woman has since come forward, alleging that the same thing happened to her in that same area.
It is an uncomfortable truth that all the victims were black and were attacked in an area that is predominantly white. In all likelihood, they must have been racially profiled – in the one instance as a thief and in the other a prostitute.
Furthermore, why had their attackers chosen to take the law into their own hands instead of relying on the police to investigate their suspicions? We saw what happened in Khayelitsha with mob justice.
Under the apartheid law, the Group Areas Act, blacks were forcibly removed from areas like the one where the attacks took place to make place for whites. Now, 20 years after democracy and a constitution that guarantees freedom of movement and domicile, we are alarmed that such incidents are still taking place. It is dangerous and provocative because the wounds of apartheid have yet to heal.
In the South Africa of 2014, these attacks are completely unacceptable and have no place in the society we wish to craft. It should be condemned in the strongest possible terms.