Xenophobia attacks

“I have never been embarrased to be South African, ever, in my entire life… I am ashamed to be South African today…”

The venue was in church, 25th May… the church was fuller than normal this evening, (that’s because the church where I’m at is housing a few of the refugees caused by xenophobia in our city, Cape Town) and I’m sitting in my prefered corner in the back pews, when my pastor uttered these words (above) with disgrace written all over his face, and it hit me… I felt exactly the same way…! the xenephobic attacks experienced in this country right now are not merely the foreigner’s problem… It is my problem aswell, as a South African and as a christian. What is strange is that, during the aphartheid era, south africans fought against exactly the same kind of oppression, we cried and experienced great pain as a nation…but now, knowing exactly how it felt, we are turning around doing the exactly the same thing to our african brothers and sisters…What evil and what wickedness has overcome our nation. A pregnant foreign woman (I don’t know her nationality), was reported to having been beaten up and murdered, and her baby cut out from her stomach in Johannesburg. “Oh God, what evil has overcome our nation?”