It's Our Responsibility To End Xenophobia

What has happened in South Africa recently is a tragedy - regardless of your stand point.

I lived in South Africa for 12 years and never imagined that it would get this bad. Especially not so soon. The truth is Xenophobia existed for the whole period that I lived there. In recent years though, I was convinced that it was dying out and probably on a sentiment expressed in the manner that the Bantu Botatwe and Barotse people in Zambia make jokes about each other. It looks like I was wrong.

The other side to this tragedy is that the rest of Africa (and the rest of the world) are now saying South Africans are xenophobic. South African's are NOT xenophobic. A couple (even one is too many) of ignorant idiots with South African identity books are xenophobic. These are the people that are messing up things for everyone else. I will even go so far as to plead that this not become a tribal issue as i have already read in some quarters. It has nothing to do with Zulu people disliking everybody else.

This is simply an evil that we must rise up against. If you live in Johannesburg, please join Mqondisi at Marks Park, Empire Rd near Hillbrow on Saturday the 24th of March at 9am. Let everybody know that Africa - the true ideal of it - will not have any of this nonsense.