EFF deputy president Floyd Shivambu told Parliament on Tuesday that it was impossible for black people to be racist. Shivambu’s remarks were made during the National Assembly debate on #BlackLivesMatter which he, as his party’s chief whip, sponsored as an urgent matter of national importance.
Shivambu also took a swipe at the Ramaphosa administration, saying that “the Marikana massacre was evidence that the sitting government has no respect for black people.“
Naming a number of black Americans who have died at the hands of white police officers, Shivambu told MPs that “racism in all its manifestations is a sickness”.
Shivambu said that while the murder of George Floyd in May this year thrust the issue of Black Lives Matter into the global spotlight, the reality was that the history of the world “is defined by anti-black racists”.
He slammed the notion of racial superiority as “the utmost rubbish”.
“Any human being who holds the view that black people are inferior is either stupid, or insane, or both,” Shivambu said.
He said that the lives of black people are still being justified because of ongoing white supremacy and white privilege.
Shivambu said that given the historical and present circumstances that black people find themselves in, it was natural for them to feel despondent, but that this did not make them racist.
“There is no black person who can be racist because they never, ever think that they are superior to any other race. They are despondent of the white supremacist system. Those who speak and work against white supremacy and the nonsense of white privilege are not racist,” Shivambu said.
IOL