I have been battling with this question for quite some time now. My introspection really stems from recent events that triggered my emotions. Andile ‘Bobo’ Mbuthu was kidnapped and beaten to a pulp after he was accused of stealing alcohol at a local tavern. His family now anxiously await a pathology test on a body that was recently discovered, to confirm whether it is their son’s or not. Andile was a matriculate, his life was only beginning.
Further afield, Ahmaud Arbery was shot and killed by two white males – father and son -in the American state of Georgia. The 25-year-old was jogging unarmed and posed no threat to the safety or livelihood of the men that ended his life. Why was he shot, then? Well, the suspects claim that they thought Arbery was a burglar. I actually think they shot him because he committed the biggest crime ever – that of being black.
What have we become as a people? What has become of humanity that we can end someone’s life in a brutal way, only on suspicion that they may have stolen liquor? We sent a man to the moon and conquered millennia through innovative technologies, and now we’ll settle for a father and son, hatred-infused killing? How did we even get to the point where a man can be killed for jogging?
Somewhere along the way we lost touch with, well, the human touch. People started believing that only their own lives and ideals are much more important than everyone else’s. It is sad, really, to think that we have come this far in life to be as hateful and as despicable as we have become.
The thing about hatred and evil energies is that they can easily consume a person and slowly take away their sanity. We don’t hate because we want to hate, and children have proven this since the dawn of men. Children cannot see anything else other than love and fun, everything contrary to that is imparted on them by the less wiser grown folk. I mean, in the Arbery incident, an old man enlisted his own son to drive out of their home and kill an innocent man – I’ll let that simmer into your minds.
The current state of affairs has had me “in my feels” since last week. I have been wondering if the perpetrators ever stop and think about how it would be if the child being beaten or killed was their own. Do people ever stop and wonder what could have been of a life that they easily brush off like that of a fly? Empathy is a reminder of our humanity. It takes us down a notch and brings us back to the reality we so desperately want to run away from.
And here’s the thing about humanity: it costs absolutely nothing! What’s even more baffling about it is how we expect to be treated in the best and most respectful way, but cannot extend that same level of treatment to others.
We now have a mother in limbo over the life of his son, not knowing whether he might be dead or alive. We also have a family who will, for a long time, be triggered whenever they see someone jogging. What is worse is that this is all happening at a time where people need to pull together and beat a pandemic that threatens everyone’s ‘normal'.
I think I now understand what Rodney King was feeling when he said, “People, I just want to say, you know, can we all get along? Can we all get along?”
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