NINE babies die every hour in South Africa. This translates to roughly 80000 deaths a year.

Multiply this by 16 years and you see a shocking mass murder of babies under democracy.

The big shock is that there is no outcry. Why is there this peaceful acceptance of this state of affairs?

My take is that it's because those who are dying are mostly black babies. Who cares about black lives anyway?

Generally three causes of the deaths are put forward. One is that HIV-Aids is responsible, then a lack of adequate healthcare and poverty. If indeed it's true that the babies die because of HIV-Aids, we must ask where are the civil society organisations that claim to campaign against mother-to-child HIV transmission.

We know that with access to the right medication, no child should be infected with HIV at birth. So this indicates that we are dealing with preventable deaths here.

On healthcare, why has government in 16 years of democracy not invested adequately in black healthcare? The ANC has been talking and promising for all the time they have been in power.

The ANC has done very little to transform healthcare. Deaths related to failure of the health care system are preventable deaths. Similarly, those related to poverty are also related to the failure of our leaders and politicians.

All this points to one thing. We have more than sufficient grounds to charge our government with mass murder if not genocide. How do we understand the continuation of mass exclusion of blacks from enjoying basic rights in a democracy?

The primary reason is the failure to end centuries of white racism. The massive death of black babies and the absence of outrage from society is because black suffering has been normalised.

We react with more anger against individual acts of racism such as the Skierlik shooting, the Reitz Four or the recent alleged murder of a traffic policeman by a rugby player.

But we are not moved by what others call "racism without racists" or institutional racism. This is racism by results. It's a racism that targets blacks, whether by omission or intention.

Until we deal with the institutionalised racism that is deeply ingrained in our psyches, economy, politics and practices, blacks will be perpetual victims without recourse to justice.

The question is where are the human rights lawyers, civil society organisations and other champions of people's rights?

One can't help thinking the reason why no effort is made to defend the wasted lives is because they are black.

The September National Imbizo has called for a campaign to defend black people against both individual and institutional racism which will, among others, make sense of statistics, to make sure we understand that they refer to actual people and in the most those are black.

The charge of mass murder or genocide against the government must be seen in the light of the much-needed society-wide stand we must take against racism. It's racist to the core that so many babies should die from preventable deaths. It's time we pointed a clear accusing finger at our government and say you are guilty of mass murder.