My first taste of Police harassment at the hands of black South African Policemen!

This will come to you as a surprise, because it was to me also a surprise...This afternoon, going from my hotel to the airport in Johannesburg, I and my friend who was driving me were stopped by two black South African policemen in the middle of the highway.

We were ordered, no asked, to come out for a stop and search exercise. I will never know how and why we got picked on. We didn't look like jobless people, we certainly didn't look like crooks, if anything, we looked like who we are, accomplished professionals, at peace with our world, assured of our place in it, and proud of our contribution to that society.

Anyway, so we were ordered to stop. We did, came out, and emptied out our pockets. I was asked to put my hands up in the air, and like they do in those american movies, I was subjected to a rather demeaning frisk. I complained about this, and after a mock apology, at least the intensity of the frisking was lessened. Finding nothing on me, I was asked to open my bags, and then came the questions of what I do, why I had several gadgets, laptops, and tablets, why I had more than one internet banking transfer tokens, why I had two phones, and why I appeared successful!

At that point, they stated that they will need to take us to the station to ask us to open the computers so they can check that we are not fraudsters. We told them I had a flight to catch, and that as much as I don't mind going with them, there will be trouble if I miss my flight.

After a lot of irritable talk about how blacks are defrauding the whites etc, they asked us to go, but demanded that we give them something! Now my friend had told me earlier that South Africa is being gradually destroyed by its blacks, and corruption and dereliction of duty is now more visible than ever before. I half believed him. But these guys had the nerve to ask me for money, after frisking me like a common fraudster in the middle of the highway with white and Indian men and women, even other black people, passing by looking at us and thinking- God don catch these ones! Not even in Nigeria will a policeman do that.. im no get eye? Of course, point blank I told them I didn't have any money to give them. We got into our car, and drove away. I am sure the white folks looking at us at that time must have been wondering why we blacks turn on ourselves.

I am shamed by this incidence. South Africa is a source of pride, pointing to what can be accomplished even in Africa, but that pride is not for us black people to boast about. We are messing up that country. From Jacob Zuma, the president, to the chap on the street, and particularly to the Nigerian folks living in Hillbrow, we blacks are going to destroy that country.

And I cannot but ask- what is the chief problem of the black man? We are individually good, and all that, but why cant we rule ourselves using the same principles, and the same collective sense of responsibility that you see white leaders (at least most of them, not all) display?

Why must we subject ourselves to misery, suffering and affront. I look ahead to another 10 years of black South African rule, and I am afraid what that will mean in actual terms. 

In the meantime, I got my first baptism of police high handedness today, in a foreign land for that matter!