A Troubled Nation - Xenophobia Outbreaks

So I’m not entirely sure how much you all follow the news – at this point my hope is that you haven’t paid it much attention. The last thing I want is for you to be sitting with fear when all is fine with me.

If you have been frantically seeking out any bit of news on the recent conflicts in South Africa I’ll take a few minutes to catch you up on what is happening on this side of the world. Let me start by saying that I am fine, feel totally covered in prayer and work continues here at Kuyasa as usual.

The struggle that is happening here is common among around the world – the question of what do we do with foreigners that cross a border illegally, refugees seeking asylum. Zimbabwe has been in a very serious crisis for the past few years as a result of a dictator that has been doing what dictator’s do. The people are starving and dying, the rate of inflation is beyond imagination and I have heard it said that it is cheaper to use the money as toilet paper than to actually buy toilet paper. They have been living in conditions that I can’t begin to imagine and to be totally honest I really don’t want to most of the time. An election almost removed Mugabe (the current president) from office, but there was of course issues with tampering and it has taken the last few months to sort it all out. Meanwhile Mugabe uses the countries resources to begin beating and killing anyone that opposes him – so now one question becomes can the man who ran against Mugabe actually stay alive long enough to make it through the end of the election process. Only time will tell.

So of course the people of Zimbabwe have come flooding across the boarder into the neighboring and more affluent South Africa. They begin to start working illegally at jobs that pay them 30 Rand a day (about $4) and South Africans - particularly black South Africans – become angry that people are taking their jobs because they are willing to work for less money.
In JoBurg, some riots broke out that included attacks on foreigners (essentially any black that didn’t speak Xhosa or Zulu). Stores in townships were looted, people were beaten and killed and shacks were burned down. The media really hyped the incidents, enabling the hatred to spread quickly and providing criminals with reason to perpetrate crimes.

In my opinion, the root cause of all this hatred is actually tribal – it goes back centuries and children are taught from a very young age that to be proud of their tribe and in turn anyone that is different from you is less than.

At Kuyasa we were warned that if anything was going to break out in Kayamandi that it would likely happen over this past weekend, so extra security precautions were taken. They actually brought in 40 polices officers from Stellenbosch, which is good because in a lot of areas the police were aiding the criminals, but was bad because it meant that 40 white Afrikaners with guns were there for target practice. I was watching the news one night with Nana – and when a government official for the police force (a black man) was asked why it took them so long to take action in the townships, he actually used the words, “We are not trained to work with animals”.

I had a film crew that was out finishing a project so I was waiting for them to return by the 6pm cut off. They didn’t make it back until 6:30pm and when I began to launch into the importance of them coming back on time, I could see on their faces that something was wrong. A few of my students began to tell me that things were falling apart beyond our protective gates. Riots had started near the police station and Somali owned shops were being broken into and looted. We were told that shots were being fired, but I never heard any gunfire and have not heard any confirmation about anyone being shot.

One of my students thought that it would be good to get some of the action on video – when another Kayamandi resident put a gun to his side and told him to stop filming. My student explained that you couldn’t see anything because of the dark and the man with the gun said that if he tried to film again that he would be shot.

I was nervous, but really not scared. I knew that the attacks were not aimed at me – so my only concern was now driving out of Kayamandi amongst a greedy mob. As we watched the mob take every item from a shop just outside the gate, my good friend Mbongeni said that today he was embarrassed to be an African.

In reality, it was nothing compared with the Los Angeles riots – but a few of my students went home and cried. They were very saddened watching people in their community treat others with such disregard.

Within two hours all looting and chaos was finished. And we have not seen any other flare-ups in Kayamandi since. Please continue to pray for Zimbabwe and South Africa that these Xenophobic attacks would cease and be replaced with love for one another.