Apartheid security forces tortured and destroyed black bodies as ritual sacrifice

Evidence

Security forces in the service of the apartheid state notoriously sacrificed black men in just these ways, as Allen Feldman has argued in a series of articles, treating them as meat, softening them up by way of torturous interrogations, seasoning with sweated beatings over braaivleis (barbecuing) fires in farflung fields just out of social sight. … The police-tortured bodies were burnt to a crisp, often hacked to pieces, so as to destroy the evidence, devoured almost literally in all but body. The sacrifice was oiled with considerable inebriation, as much to obliterate the memory as to loosen any inhibition, to disqualify any qualms as symbolically to imbibe the blood of the Savior. To cleanse the spirit of the burden of memory, to save the soul by deleting conscience. — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race, 1562 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: State security and township rebels treated bodies as ritual sacrifice — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race: Reflections on…, 1562; Apartheid functioned as a religious conviction demanding sacrifice and communal devotion; Apartheid police treated tortured black bodies as sacrifice to destroy evidence and memory — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race: Reflections on…, 1562 (+5 more)

Broader Connections

• Apartheid police treated tortured black bodies as sacrifice to destroy evidence and memory #corroborates (0.95) — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race, 1562