Cape Town’s Tanzanian community is reeling. Yet another brother is gone; 39-year-old Isakwisa Atupele Mwamasage, known to many as Ras Isa, a father, a Rasta, a shoemaker. He was killed in Mowbray, Cape Town on Thursday 28th August, in the presence of two police officers. And this is the third Tanzanian man in just two weeks to die at the hands of officers in the Western Cape.
The initial police statement says Isa swallowed drugs, complained of pain, and later died in hospital. But the video that did the rounds on social media appears to tell another story.
In that grainy footage, Ras Isa is pinned on the floor inside his shoe repair shop, two officers pressing down on him while his legs kick in desperation. There are no cries for mercy, no words; just his body shutting under the weight. His final act of humanity was involuntary: he urinated on himself as life drained away. Then stillness.
That video is now circulating, and it does not show a man who walked into a police van alive. It shows a man who was crushed, silenced, and later, off camera, carried away like a lifeless weight. The community is traumatised because they saw it and were unable to assist him in his final moments.
The resemblance to George Floyd’s killing in America is undeniable. Another man of colour suffocated under authority, his last moments watched but not honoured, his dignity stripped in the very place he earned his living.
A community leader who witnessed the aftermath put it plainly:
“Even if he was selling drugs, they were not supposed to kill him. What they did to Isa was inhumane. They came back only with his cellphone, saying he was safe at the station. Later, we found out the truth. The video tells us everything.”
And this truth cuts deeper because Isa is not the only one. Two weeks, three men, all Tanzanian, all gone after encounters with the police. One beaten in Bellville, another killed in Joe Slovo, now Ras Isa in Mowbray.
Authorities promise investigations, autopsies, dockets handed to IPID. Promises, promises. But the community knows what they saw.
South Africa may not be America, but the cries are the same. The video of Ras Isa’s death is not just evidence; it is testimony. Testimony of how quickly a life can be reduced to nothing under the weight of a system that claims to serve and protect.
Ras Isa was a father. A craftsman. A man who worked with his hands to make an honest living. And now his children, his friends, his community, are left with nothing but a haunting video that speaks louder than any police press release or news story ever could.
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