The star throwing poor blacks under the bus

Originally published at PoliTrick or TreaT

This is just a simple observation of how differently news can be reported depending to the class of the people at hand.

This morning iol.co.za ran a story about a guy named Respect Mkhwanazi, a 34 year old Sandton restaurant manager who's studying for a BComm degree. He has a wife and two kids, two

Photo credit: Chris Collingridge, the star

and twelve. Mr Mkhwanazi worked hard to be were he is, he started out as a cleaner 13 years ago at his restaurant and now he manages it. One evening while he was driving home, he was


Stopped by police officers, After 20 minutes, the cops signalled for him to proceed. He drove a few metres, stopped at a red light when the light turned green he accelerated, the cops thought he had stolen his BMW, shot at him and when he stopped, they took him out of his car, banged his head against the car, when they finally realized that the car isn't stolen, they apologized and let him go. [Full story here]

The second story appeared just two weeks ago on the same publication. This one goes like this: A gunmen fires shot at a BRT bus, two people get injured. The gunman flees to the near, Nancefield Hostel.

Photo credit: Jennifer Bruce, the Star

Hours later while Hostel dwellers are asleep, Police officers, Metro Cops, Security forces and soldiers raid the hostel, armed with heavy artillery. They kick in doors, wake people up while they're still half naked, Turn their rooms upside down, confiscate a few guns and make little to no arrest. [Full story here and accompanying image gallery here]

It should be noted that on both stories, our law enforcement used excessive force, on the first story they shot at an innocent man on the second story they raided people's homes carrying riffles, asked them to lie face down in their underwear and turned their rooms upside down but if you read both stories you notice that on the first one, they made it a point to mention the car the victim drove, his occupation, the fact that he's a family man who made a name for himself. The police officers were painted as the villains, who shot at an innocent man. While on the other story, law enforcers are painted in a positive light, they are just trying to catch criminals, leaving no stone unturned. Nothing is mentioned of the innocent men who got woken up early in the night by cops kicking down their doors. In fact, a female photographer took picture of these innocent men in their underwear. The pictures of the half naked men were posted on page two of a national paper with the implication that these men were criminals (How humiliating).

The moral of the story: If you're poor, you're not worth a shit!