Under Construction @ Keele 2016 Volume 2 Issue 1 | Page 45

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masses, with the aim to exercise power over them. This links to Fanon’s clarification
of the relationship between racism and existence – ‘[t]he object of racism is no
longer the individual man but a certain form of existing.’15
Developing his concept of necropolitics, Achille Mbembe also agrees that
racism is 'the ever present shadow in Western political thought and practice,
especially when it comes to imagining the inhumanity of, or rule over, foreign
peoples.’16 For instance during the period of colonisation, South African plantation
workers were subjected to the gaze of the coloniser. Moreover, while referring to the
political sovereignty and biopolitical operations in the contemporary world, Mbembe
writes that ‘[t]o exercise sovereignty is to exercise control over mortality and to define
life as the deployment and manifestation of power.’17 These death conditions create
mass destruction and deadly environments in communities. Although Mbembe’s
observation focuses on contemporary warfare, his perception is relevant to political
death through racism. In view of such perspectives, Sizwe Bansi is Dead is
outstanding; it theatrically testifies to indirect and invisible political death.
Inherent in H\