Can good come from xenophobic attacks?

I am standing at the church door greeting parishioners as they head home. Only then I realised only one of our immigrant parishioners had come for our Sunday Mass.

This is strange but not surprising. With the devilish violence against immigrants plaguing our country, it could be fatal to walk our streets. So much innocent blood has tainted the soul of our nation.

Our parish community is privileged to be a home to brothers and sisters from outside of our borders. This validates our claim to be Catholic. This year we received a Zimbabwean brother who converted to our faith.

In church you would not notice that there are Catholics from other countries. We all look the same, literally and figuratively. It is only when I greet people at the door or people approach me that I know our parish is culturally richer.

The scramble for Africa was the consequence of the Berlin Conference of 1884-85. At this gathering European imperialists divided Africa into territories and designed present geographical boundaries. Look at Southern Africa. People in Mpumalanga have close and blood relatives in Swaziland and Mozambique. It will be strange to refer to your next of kin as foreigners. Maybe things will change once all of us have one passport, at least according to some ideals of the African Union charter.

Last month I visited the Mountain Kingdom, Lesotho. The Basotho did not treat me as a foreigner. Everywhere I went I was received warmly. This has been my experience in all my travels. Priests have asked me to preside at their liturgies. I suspect one reason for doing so was to show their congregations that Catholicism has no boundaries. It was a joy to observe that belonging to a universal Church does not remove local expressions of faith—Inculturation.

I struggle to understand why some South Africans stooped so low by being xenophobic. If South Africa is a Christian country, I suppose some Catholics and Christians in general are also xenophobic. I do not want to be simplistic in my understanding of such a complex scenario.

Apartheid carries some blame for the attacks against immigrants. The racist system indoctrinated people to believe only their tribe or ethnic group mattered. If you were born speaking Zulu, you were supposed to hate those who were speaking Xhosa. In this context non-Zulu speakers were referred to as izilwane: animals or things without souls. Those who are different are not entitled to dignity and respect.

The recent violence recalls the brutality of the likes of Hendrik Verwoerd and PW Botha. The television scenes of the attacks reminded me of what happened in places such as Sharpeville (1960), Soweto (1976) and Mamelodi (1984). This time it was not the white soldiers and policemen. It was black people murdering and persecuting each other. Violence has become our culture.

This kind of violence does not happen in the golden suburbs. It happens in poverty stricken townships such as Alexandra and Diepsloot. Poverty has turned people into animals. Our townships are like the jungles where only the big and strong survive. For many poor people survival of the fittest is a lived experience.

Let us remove xenophobia from our memories. To paraphrase Marie Antoinette, the poor people have only cake. The cake cannot be shared by all people. All of them are hungry and desperate. So who takes the cake? The answer is that when two bulls fight the grass suffers.

Let us turn the stupidity, anger and frustration of some poor people into something positive. Let us all pressurise the government to speed up transformation. Most resources are wasted when government officials spend most of their energies deepening the rift between Thabo Mbeki and Jacob Zuma. It is time to deliver the promises of freedom.

Can we also show the same energy in ridding our country of crime and moral degeneration? I am confident that something good can come out this terrible experience. Immigrants are our own brothers and sisters. The enemy is within.

Unless we address issues of poverty and development, the soul of our nation will continue to fall apart.