Bongani Sibeko was just a toddler when he and his family were forced to flee their home in apartheid South Africa, as Black men, women and children were dying at the hands of authorities upholding the country's legal system of racial segregation. As the son of revolutionaries, he found things weren
Bongani Sibeko was just a toddler when he and his family were forced to flee their home in apartheid South Africa, as Black men, women and children were dying at the hands of authorities upholding the country's legal system of racial segregation.
"The distinction between first-, second- and third-world countries is no longer a stable set of distinctions, because from the founding of the United States to the present there's always been an excluded, dehumanized population," Dr. Joel Modiri, a senior lecturer in jurisprudence at South Africa's University of Pretoria, told ABC News in a recent telephone interview."Apartheid and Jim Crow are really no different.
Experts said racial inequality remains deeply entrenched in American society today, as a lingering legacy of slavery and segregation. Experts said South Africa shares many of the features of structural racism that are found in the United States. When the National Party gained power in South Africa after the 1948 general election, its all-white government immediately started implementing its apartheid policy of racial segregation and economic discrimination against non-whites in the country as well as in the territory of South West Africa, the name for modern-day Namibia when it was under South African rule.
Police brutality also remains an issue in post-apartheid South Africa as well as in other African nations, including Kenya and Nigeria. From Johannesburg to New York CityThe year was 1963 and Bongani Sibeko's father, David Sibeko, was a rising member of the Pan Africanist Congress, a Black South African political movement that had broken away from the African National Congress.
The family put down roots in a predominately Black neighborhood on the Upper West Side. Bongani Sibeko, who was 13 at the time, recalled knowing that he was South African but still feeling “amongst my own.” Both his parents became involved with African American grassroots movements. How Africa reacted to George FloydOver the years, there have been several high-profile cases of police using deadly force against Black people that have energized America's debate on racism and inequality. The most recent was George Floyd.
Although the letter called for a debate on racism around the world, Ambassador Dieudonne Desire Sougouri highlighted the situation in the United States, saying that Floyd's death"is unfortunately not an isolated incident, with many previous cases of unarmed persons of African descent suffering the same fate due to unchecked police brutality."
Experts noted how the widening rift between liberals and conservatives in the United States has made legislative reform a challenge. "I did some soul-searching," McCrorey told ABC News in a recent telephone interview."I felt like I could run my business remotely and not only survive in Ghana but thrive out here."Ghana, a former slave trading hub, has long advocated for Africans and those of African descent abroad to return to the continent. Many Black Americans, such as civil rights leader W. E. B. Du Bois, settled there in the 1960s.
"Over time, things calm down, people go back to their regular lives until the next outrage happens," he told ABC News.McCrorey visited Africa for the first time a few weeks after Garner's death. He fell in love with the country of Ghana and its people, and the trip inspired him to start his back-to-Africa travel company.
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