Dr. Pedro Mzileni
BlackHouse Kollective Soweto (BHK) stands in solidarity with Dr. Pedro Mzileni and the growing list of supporters who affirm the need to identify and critically engage the continued legacy of settler colonialism culture and structural antiblack racism in Occupied Azania. We oppose the weaponization of institutions and discourses that are meant to counter the legacy of apartheid and its modern-day manifestations.
Turning what should be decolonized institutions that advance social equality and democracy into mechanisms for persecuting thinking Black educators is an extension of apartheid and discrimination that we must abolish. This attack on Dr. Mzileni is not only a threat against other critics of structural racism and antiblackness, but also sends a message to every other Black voice that dares to speak of their lived reality. This stratagem limits and punishes historical analyses, theories, concepts, and those who courageously speak of Black consciousness and Decoloniality.
The #RhodesMustFall and #FeesMustFall student movements demonstrated that our youth are aware of the multiple ways in which truth and liberating education have become a political battleground. Dr. Mzileni is only one among other brilliant Black educators who have been recently accused and persecuted for daring to speak truth to power.
Every attack on any one of us should generate opposition to those who wage it and serve as a reminder of their arrogance in wanting to control our response to such provocations. Black educators are therefore reminded of their responsibility to organize themselves alongside the black community as well as outside of the Westernized institutions where they are employed to combat institutional racism and to counter constant and systematic attacks on blackness and being Afrikan.
We call on all committed to our struggle to stand firm and re-commit to the goal of advancing free and decolonized education in Occupied Azania.
We stand with Dr Mzileni!
BLACK LOVE. BLACK POWER. IZWE-LETHU.
