Family… yesterday I nearly got arrested right here in JBurg… riding in the car with Karbo and Bafana, police stopped us, ask us to get out of the car and produce id… I gave them my UK driving licence, but apparently that wasnt adequate and all non-citizens are supposed to produce valid id on request like a passport… I told them I had been on the UK Foreign Office website before I left for travel advice and it didnt state that I had to walk around with my passport… Throughout this I was laughing because I was trying to get my head around the notion that I was being ARRESTED, like REALLY? My brothers were getting a little irate at their treatment of me, because the police were insisting that they take me to the police station… One officer was just putting me in the van, when the other said, listen, we dont like it when people try tell us the law, now you seem like a nice man but your friends were getting a little too loud and we dont like that… make sure you have valid documents on you next time, you can go now I thought they were on a shakedown but naaaah… questions or lesson learnt from this was, what does the notion of submitting or surrender mean to us as black men especially when we are dealing with supposed authority figures like cops etc? At no point did I fear for my safety, I was more worried for my friends, so I was quite willing to go with the police… but my whole posture was peace… now Im not suggesting for one second that the murders that the police carry out against black folks are excusable, but it did raise a thought about resisting arrest and how it seems the position of surrender is a difficult one for brothers based on our beliefs around respect, masculinity etc…
Posted on: Wed, 31 Dec 2014 11:50:18 +0000
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