Collins Khosa. George Floyd.
Two names on the lips of everyone aware and outraged by the police and military killings of Black civilians.
Or at least, they should be.
The killing of George Floyd at the knee of former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin is by now widely reported and discussed. Governments, regional organisations, international NGOs, and the United Nations itself have condemned the murder. The horrific incident, the latest reminder of the illness of systemic racism in the US, has also been addressed by the Chairperson of the African Union Commission.
And, yet the murder of Collins Khosa has been entirely ignored by the international community. He is one of at least 13 that police and army forces have killed in South Africa during the COVID-19 pandemic. I started this article by placing his name first, alongside that of George Floyd. I wonder how many non-South Africans (or even South Africans for that matter) would know his name before reading this?
Mr. Khosa was a resident of Alexandra, Johannesburg. He was tortured and killed by law enforcement officials in the midst of the nationwide lockdown enforced in South Africa as of 26 March 2020.
The South African High Court in Pretoria recently heard the matter in an urgent application. The lawyers on behalf of the family argued the Ministers of Police and Defence had failed to take steps to prevent illegal action by law enforcement officials. Judge Hans Fabricius ruled in favour of Khosa's family, finding that the right to dignity, life, the right not to be tortured in any way, and the right not to be treated or punished in a cruel, inhumane, or degrading way, cannot be suspended, even during a state of emergency.
The court cited a 2019 United Nations report on torture in South Africa which provided that the government had not been effectively investigating allegations of state torture. The South African Police Service (SAPS) and the South African National Defence Force (SANDF) were directed by the court to, among other things, suspend the soldiers, pending an investigation, and it had to develop a code of conduct for both SAPS and SANDF, as well as institute disciplinary proceedings.
The legal team representing the family of Collins Khosa rejected the inquiry report by SANDF, which cleared soldiers of causing Mr. Khosa's death. The police opened a murder docket on the matter and this is still ongoing.
The purpose of this article is to highlight, through the lens of epistemic justice, that the law enforcement-initiated killing of Mr Khosa and others cannot go unaddressed, particularly by South African and Global South institutions, as well as to provide reasons as to why certain tragedies and human rights violations have been ignored, forgotten, or unheard.
WHAT IS EPISTEMIC JUSTICE?
Epistemic injustice is unfairness related to knowledge, a theory first put forward by Miranda Fricker in 2007. Part of this complex discipline is testimonial injustice which occurs when prejudice causes a hearer to unfairly assign a lower level of credibility to a speaker's testimony or report. Simply put, it is the unjust ignoring and devaluing of someone’s experience, thereby devaluing them “in a capacity essential to human value”. A famous example of this is the “great chain of being’” codified by Arthur Lovejoy in 1936. The concept relates to the superiority of a certain culture above all the rest in relation to the intellectual development and memory of a given society. It is grounded in the idea that western male culture sits atop a “natural” societal hierarchy, to the exclusion and oppression of all others.
We see this injustice every day. When a woman is sexually assaulted and then ignored by legal mechanisms and the press. When tragedy and atrocity in the Global South is seen as “ordinary” while violence in the Global North garners the spotlight. When police stamp on the neck of a Black man with impunity. Epistemic justice seeks to undo these biases and invisible structures that have permeated throughout global society for hundreds of years.
BLACK COMMUNITIES ARE CONTINUALLY TREATED AS IF THEY ARE BENEATH THE LAW
The notion of this “chain”, with its root in colonialism, demonstrates the dangers Black communities in modern society face, of which their white counterparts can have no understanding. The brilliant S'bu Zikode is one of the most coherent speakers on social movements and the law. He puts forward that poor Black communities are continually met with excessive brutality because they do not have actual legal protection or avenues. They are deemed, in the eyes of state and society, to be beneath the law. Would a white man in Sandton or Manhattan meet the same fate as George Floyd or Collins Khosa in similar circumstances? This is the very crux of the Black Lives Matter movement.
Implicit social cognition exists because society has been engineered this way for centuries. Undoing this will require a dramatic and necessary shift in how humanity interacts with and perceives the world. It is important to note oppressed communities are not “voiceless”, but rather their voices have been deliberately ignored and/ or silenced. When law and society fails the marginalised, the brutalised, the oppressed, they are left with no choice but to struggle for political solutions. It is the duty of the privileged in these circumstances to ask how they may be allies to this struggle as opposed to making uninformed disavowals of people quite literally fighting for their lives. Basically – focus more on why people are protesting as opposed to how the protests impact on your sensibilities.
WAYS FORWARD
How can we promote epistemic diversity and justice? How can we ensure ignored voices are given equal footing?
Curing epistemic injustice requires a critical analysis of existing institutions and power dynamics in order to dismantle this historical “chain” to create structures that listen to and hear these voices traditionally shunned in mainstream society. It is vital not just to listen, but to reimagine how we operate to include these voices and experiences.
Why, for example, has the ANC condemned police killings in the US but said nothing of South Africa’s own brutal police and military, other than a statement delivered by the President nearly two months after the death of Mr. Khosa? We need to understand that the current unequal global mindset is not some accident of nature – it is an intentional ongoing project to ensure the poor remain poor and that certain voices are shunned from history. It is our duty to ensure that does not continue.
We must ensure governments and communities in the Global South care about murders in their own municipalities as much as they do about murders thousands of miles away. One innocent life is not less valuable than another. We must hold international organisations to account on their duties to uphold international human rights equally, everywhere, for everyone. Human rights are the basic rights and freedoms that belong to every person in the world, from birth until death.
The Preamble to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights recognises that “the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world”. We must advocate for these rights from all perspectives, not just Eurocentric ones. Critical international legal scholars argue that education is vital to this change in mindset, at all levels. History must be taught from different perspectives, as must law and sociology amongst a number of other disciplines. Listen, understand, and respond to the changing social currents.
Anti-discrmination movements cannot be mutually exclusive. Focused, yes, but not to the extent of excluding other voices and thereby violating another’s rights - this would only serve to render any human rights movement null and void. The promise of the international human rights regime is a united society, emphasising our commonality. We must make good on that promise.
Do not forget Collins Khosa.
Do not forget Elma Robyn Montsumi.
Do not forget Sibusiso Amos.
Do not forget Adane Emmanuel.
Do not forget Razan al-Najjar.
Do not forget Breonna Taylor.
Do not forget Us.
Human Rights Pulse core team member, Vaughn is passionate about sustainability and human rights, his scholarship and writing focuses on international law, climate change and transitional justice.