I am against any violence irrespective of against whom it is perpetrated. I am also against perpetrators of violence. This includes violence perpetrated against African people by white people in South Africa and the US. This violence is centuries old and affects everybody - African children, women and men. It comes in different forms - physical, cultural, psychological, military.

The perpetrators of this violence not only continue to visit it upon the indigenous people every day but are also usurping their land.

Travelling in South Africa, there is a stark reminder of this violence - poverty, unemployment, uninhabitable sprawling shantytowns, drug and alcohol abuse and a myriad of other social ills which are tantamount to committing genocide. But there has never been a special parliamentary meeting convened to address this wholesale violence.

A seven year old African girl was recently raped by a white man at Dros restaurant. He was found guilty. The sentencing has been delayed to the extent that some people suspect foul play. A few days back, an African security guard was shot and killed by a white man. MEC for Education Panyaza Lesufi visited the deceased's family. About two years ago, two white males in Coligny in the North West Province murdered a minor they claimed had been stealing watermelons or some such nonsense. They have been found guilty and a whites only organisation, Afri-Forum, a white supremacist organisation which some media outlets in South Africa including those controlled by African people refer to as as a civil rights group, has appealed the sentence. The sentencing has been delayed. They are going to bribe the judges to mete out a lenient sentence. Two whites in the province of Mpumalanga or Limpopo forced an African man into a coffin and threatened to kill him. They were convicted. Where do they serve their sentence? In fact, where do convicted white criminals serve their sentences?

African people in white farms are victims of violence by their white employers. They work for meagre wages and invariably do not enjoy their rights.

Dr Marimba Ani wrote that the first thing Europeans do when they colonise a people is to go for their culture or thinking processes. If a people controls another's thinking processes, they have complete control of them.

Violence against women and children and erratic behaviour which results in African people killing each other is a consequence of colonisers controlling our thinking processes. We had initiation schools where young males were taught morals, ethics and rules of behaviour. Europeans told Africans that those were uncivilised schools and closed them down.

President Cyril Ramaphosa announced that R1b is going to be spent to deal with violence against women and children. This is reactive, it is not being proactive. Moreover, we know that that money is going to be given by way of tenders and contracts to those who donated to his ANC election campaign. Aspen whose chairman donated to his election campaign has been awarded a contract to supply anti-retroviral drugs to the government.

Let us go back to our African ways of living and discard practices that we no longer need if we no longer have any use for them. Let us fight against white supremacy, colonialism, imperialism and capitalism. Money is not going to buy back our African way of life and good behaviour.

By Sam Ditshego.

South Africa.