Moerane Commission: Researcher says political violence an act against oppression
A Durban-born academic has told the Moerane Commission of Inquiry that political violence exists because modern governance often undermines the cause of the oppression.
Rhodes University's Dr. Richard Pithouse says his studies have focused mainly on the causes of political violence in KZN.
"If you look at the modern world, which is fundamentally constituted around and through racism, whenever African people have stood up for themselves and insisted on their dignity being respected - that racist system is unable to grasp that African people have the same political agency as all other people," he says.
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He says the undermining of the oppressed, which existed during apartheid, is still prevalent today.
"If African people rebelled against oppression - it's always assumed there must a white person. If you're unable to find a white person, then perhaps there'll be Indian person to explain why they were rebelling. We see in this encounter that this colonial idea has been taken into the post-apartheid era.
"There is this idea that there must be some agitator. People are living in inhumane conditions, of course, they're going to stand up and demand to be treated like human beings," he says.