police brutality - more real than I thought
Something horific happened the other day just outside my house.
With South Africa having a massive unemployment rate it is not uncommon to have people coming round to your house asking if you have any work for them. Now I live in a predominantly "white" area. Now living in a country where a) racism is a very real problem and b) public taxes are badly distributed you end up with a situation where many of the commuters who make use of the train that makes a stop very near my house have no access to toilets. Because a) racist people won't let a black person (the 99% of the demographic that makes use of the train) use their bathroom and b) there are no toilets (or even covering should it be raining) at the train stop near my house.
Unfortunately for one of my unemployed countryman searching for a job in my area (I'm talking about job where they can hopefully wash a car for R10/1.60 US$ or work in your garden for the day for R50/8.30 US$) he desperately needed to wee. What usually happens in this case is that there is a concealed "grove" near the train stop where people can quickly relief themselves... you are mostly concealed. At this point a police car drove by.
Now don't get me wrong, I agree the public urination is wrong, but when there is nowhere for you to urinate there comes a point where you look the other way.
Instead of merely repromanding the poor fellow they made him drop his pants and sprayed his penis with whatever pepper-spray/mace they currently use for crowd/fight control. They then drove off.
The result, we had a man in agony on our front lawn. We phoned the ambulance. Adventually I suggested the poor guy wash his penis with some milk... which I assumed might be a good idea. It certainly didn't make it worse.
The ambulance adventually arrived 5 hours later... a little late.
I hope the guy is OK. I am horrified that peoples racism could cause them to harm another human life in that way. Policemen that we are supposed to respect. The sad thing though is that even if the poor victim of this assault were able to indentify the policeman, nothing would happen to them.
I really hope that God allows me to help this countries unemployment rate.
-->Still Ablaze
With South Africa having a massive unemployment rate it is not uncommon to have people coming round to your house asking if you have any work for them. Now I live in a predominantly "white" area. Now living in a country where a) racism is a very real problem and b) public taxes are badly distributed you end up with a situation where many of the commuters who make use of the train that makes a stop very near my house have no access to toilets. Because a) racist people won't let a black person (the 99% of the demographic that makes use of the train) use their bathroom and b) there are no toilets (or even covering should it be raining) at the train stop near my house.
Unfortunately for one of my unemployed countryman searching for a job in my area (I'm talking about job where they can hopefully wash a car for R10/1.60 US$ or work in your garden for the day for R50/8.30 US$) he desperately needed to wee. What usually happens in this case is that there is a concealed "grove" near the train stop where people can quickly relief themselves... you are mostly concealed. At this point a police car drove by.
Now don't get me wrong, I agree the public urination is wrong, but when there is nowhere for you to urinate there comes a point where you look the other way.
Instead of merely repromanding the poor fellow they made him drop his pants and sprayed his penis with whatever pepper-spray/mace they currently use for crowd/fight control. They then drove off.
The result, we had a man in agony on our front lawn. We phoned the ambulance. Adventually I suggested the poor guy wash his penis with some milk... which I assumed might be a good idea. It certainly didn't make it worse.
The ambulance adventually arrived 5 hours later... a little late.
I hope the guy is OK. I am horrified that peoples racism could cause them to harm another human life in that way. Policemen that we are supposed to respect. The sad thing though is that even if the poor victim of this assault were able to indentify the policeman, nothing would happen to them.
I really hope that God allows me to help this countries unemployment rate.
-->Still Ablaze
posted by Gareth at 12:27 AM
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