Patriotic Alliance leader Gayton McKenzie told mourners at the funeral service for Nathaniel Julies that no other child's death would have had the same impact on the coloured community.
Nathaniel, who had Down's Syndrome, was shot dead by police in Eldorado Park who claimed that they thought he was a gangster.
Referring to the children of community members at the funeral service on Saturday, McKenzie said that if any of them had been shot instead of Nathaniel, the gangster label would have stuck, but it was impossible to do so with the teen who was killed when he went to buy biscuits from a nearby tuck shop.
McKenzie said he was tired that coloured people are only celebrated at funerals.
He went on to chastise those in the coloured community who "accuse each other of being sell-outs". "If you want to know if you are a coloured and a sell-out, if what I say today makes you uncomfortable then you have your answer - that you are a sell-out," he said.
McKenzie told Nathaniel's mother that he was sorry that it had to be her child that died to unite the coloured community, but that no other child's death would have had the same impact on the historically fractured race group.
"It had to be your child. There could have been nobody else."
Pointing to nearby mourners, Mackenzie said: "If it was his child or his child, the gangster label would have stuck but the gangster label could not stick here."
"I am sorry that your child had to die for the coloured nation to rise," McKenzie said to loud cheers.
McKenzie said his friend Kenny Kunene called him to ask why, when a coloured child is killed every week, this child's death has incited the community to protest against the treatment of coloured people.
"I said to him, Kenny because this was the purest, this was God's child. This was a child that had no sin."
Members of the ANC, EFF and various other political and civil society organisations also attended the funeral service.
IOL