It was like something out of an exploitation movie: a man was chained to the back of a van and dragged through the streets.
In broad daylight. By the police. But this was no movie – it was real life! The man was a Mozambiquan taxi driver in South Africa, whose supposed infraction was being wrongly parked.
Mido Macia, 27, was videoed by onlookers being dragged some 100 metres along the road by the South African police in a township near Johannesburg after apparently resisting arrest. He later died from injuries sustained, it is alleged, from a beating later suffered while in police custody – but it is the image of him being dragged behind the police van that has entered the world’s consciousness.
This shocking incident also raises the important question: if those whom are meant to serve and protect us from crime – to whom you are supposed to report violent crimes – are the same ones perpetrating them, then who do we turn to? In South Africa, this is a question people ask every day.
Look back to 2008, when in the face of a violent crime epidemic, South Africa’s then deputy security minister Susan Shabangu pushed for a ‘shoot-to-kill’ policy. “I want no warning shots,” she insisted to police in Pretoria. “You have one shot and it must be a kill shot. You must kill the bastards if they threaten you or the community. You must not worry about the regulations. That is my responsibility. Your responsibility is to serve and protect.”
The argument can be made that Shabangu was carried away with the zeal of protecting South Africans, but is that ever just cause for a person in authority to spew so much venom, and with the backing of high office?
We are fortunate enough in Ireland that the Garda are not so heavy-handed in their approach. But such brutal police action is not unknown in the western world. In 1992, Rodney King became a sort of poster boy for police brutality after his beating at the hands of five police officers in Los Angeles. This, in the land of the free and the home of the brave. The race riots that exploded in the city following this incident showed just how deep the anger ran.
There are some who would justify such methods of policing in that they serve criminals right, that criminals can’t be treated with kid gloves. But treating everyone in a community like animals in anticipation of crushing the activities of a bad few is like trying to kill a rat with a bomb. Yes, the rat is destroyed, but so is everyone and everything else in the area. Why go all GI Joe on people who are just trying to live through what is already a difficult economic environment? Like we say where I’m from, there’s only one way to describe what’s wrong: it’s wrong.
Olajide Jatto is a software engineer and writer based in Dublin.
