Thou shalt kill thy neighbour

Misheck Mfula and Emmanuel Sithole, are the two names on my mind. The two names have been on my mind especially the last few days since 25^th May 2015.

Misheck and Emmanuel’s names have stuck on my mind not because they were the only victims of xenophobic attacks in South Africa. Their killings were not the most brutal either. NO. However their killings were equally heartless and profoundly inhuman.

Misheck Mfula for obvious reasons, he hailed from Zambia. Emmanuel Sithole was a Mozambican national brutally killed in broad day light while women children and other people looked on. Those who looked on included a Sunday Times of South Africa, photo journalist and other reporters who documented the killing to the whole world.

At the time the 2015 South African xenophobic attacks were attracting media and worldwide attention, I was really glued to various news channels following the events in South Africa as closely as I could since I had just sent two young girls to Bergville in Kwazulu Natal province, for the school holiday. One of the girls is only aged 16 in her eleventh grade while the other slightly older at 21. These were not easy times knowing that I had just sent the girls to ‘enemy territory’ and while I had hoped they enjoy the school holiday, their safety was of primal importance.

Two weeks or so before the girls boarded the Shalom bus from Lusaka to Johannesburg, a zulu king named Goodwill Zwelithini had reportedly told his subjects that foreigners were the source of the problems of South Africans. Foreigners were responsible for the high crime rate, foreigners got the jobs and businesses of the locals it was said. The people immediately rose in arms against foreign nationals many of whom were killed brutally.

King Zwelithini later clarified that his statement had been taken out of context, but the damage was already done as violence spread to other places including Gauteng province especially in areas around Johannesburg. But this was not the first time South Africans rose in arms against other nationals. In 2008, similar attacks were witnessed where thousands of Zimbabweans, Mozambicans, Malawians and many other nationals were targets.

Emmanuel Sithole was walking in the streets of Alexandra dressed in a red shirt and blue jeans, matched nicely with his shoes. He added a corduroy jacket to his stylish look as he walked along the road. Suddenly he was attacked by a young man with a seemingly painful metal object before others emerged with other weapons including a butcher knife. The attack continued until a point where even after the help given by the Sunday Times reporter, the man didn’t make it to see a doctor alive.

Misheck Mfula on the other hand was stabbed to death after pursuing ‘gangsters’ who ordered some food from a restaurant he was working for and later refused to settle the bill. Of course the killing of Misheck did not make any international headlines, but the news filtered through to Zambia and the story was widely carried on local radio stations and online news websites.

Many other people were killed in xenophobic attacks some in more brutal fashion than Misheck and Emanuel. I saw pictures of a man who was burnt alive, a tyre strapped around them for the rubber to provide the much needed burning fuel. There are many other victims, and all of them should be remembered on African freedom day. The 2015 Africa freedom day should be dedicated to all the victims of xenophobic attacks, victims of war in Libya and many other countries, victims of political violence like the lives currently being lost in Burundi and definitely not most of these megalomaniacs we call political leaders.

Protesters against xenophobia in Durban

In the aftermath of these xenophobic attacks, a lot of people including Economic Freedom Fighters’ Julius Malema, blamed the South African government for not doing enough to arrest the situation. There are not many occasions that I agree with Mr Malema, but the truth is that since he fell out with the ANC leadership he has shown his other side though some of his methods may be extremely unconventional.

According to Mr Malema, the South African government’s reaction to the attack left much to be desired.  Mr Malema took exception to Jacob Zuma’s speech on the issue to Parliament which he said lacked passion like the one he showed when he went to Parliament to defend spending of public money for his private home renovations and security. I can echo Mr Malema by adding that the reaction of SADC, COMESA, AU and individual countries was also not decisive enough hence perpetuated the barbaric acts.

My view… my thoughts…

A month or so before any news channel reported the first attacks linked to xenophobia, I sat at Protea Hotel Tower with a childhood friend of mine and expressed these same thoughts. We also seemed to agree that unless the South African political leadership acted deliberately to arrest this, xenophobia would exist in the rainbow nation. A month on, the attacks started.

My opinions may not be drawn from empirical scientific conclusions, but I maintain that I have formed the opinions from my experiences. Take for instance a recent encounter I had with some gentlemen in Johannesburg. A black guy and his three Indian friends were travelling to Durban later that evening, after a weekend in Johannesburg where they came to watch cricket games. I was at a MacDonald’s joint when the gentlemen came to join me on my table and they endlessly talked about football and sport in general.  When they spoke about football, I noticed that two of the fellas were Manchester United fans who had divided opinions over the tactics of coach Loius van Gaal.

One of them described LVG as a man who owns a Ferrari which he keeps packed all the time but instead uses a Toyota Corrola to go car racing. I couldn’t help but join in on their conversation. We spoke for close to an hour and then one of them asked where I was from, to which I answered that I was from Zambia. They asked me if we used Rands in Zambia, had Boko Haram, and a horde of other questions which I thought were question that my 6year old son should ask.

You get these kind of questions from many South Africans. They know nothing about other people and they just don’t care. This is very different from Zimbabweans for instance. I once met a Zimbabwean man who told me stories about Zambia that even I didn’t know. He went on and told me stories of Godfrey Chitalu, who according to the man was the best African footballer he had ever seen. He moved from Zambian football to Zambian politics and then Africa in general.

I have had a countless number of such conversations with Zimbabweans. In a role I was involved in as a young professional preparing import and export documents I had many interactions with truck drivers most of whom turned out to be Zimbabweans. From my interactions with the Zimbabwean drivers, I learnt that Zimbabweans generally are more knowledgeable about other countries’ geo-political spheres. Zambian are like that too.

Since the third or fourth Grade, we were introduced to a subject called CIVICS. In CIVICS, we were taught of the history, economics and politics of Zambia and the entire region. We graduated to the entire Africa and the world. We were taught about racism and apartheid in South Africa. All these lessons were engraved in our young brains and we grew up tolerant people. We understood that Zambia played a big role in the liberation of other African countries and South Africa in particular.

This in my view was a pre-emptive measure against xenophobia or any other form of segregation. Of course we had many people as we grew up who didn’t speak the same languages as we did, or didn’t look like us but we were all one. During the apartheid years, there were many ANC operatives who had fled to Zambia and some eventually made Zambia their permanent home and we have lived with them and embraced them as brothers and sisters.

It’s not only the primary school lessons in CIVICS that engraved inclusiveness in us, but our school curriculum in Geography for instance included lessons on North America, Central America and Europe. History lessons included the history of the Republic of South Africa itself, European history and so forth.

In South Africa they ask who the president of Zambia is, some ask if Zambia is close to Nigeria. You will hear one or two who know Kenneth Kaunda, but then oddly enough don’t know if he is still alive. They probably think he died when Nelson Mandela died.

This is not representative of all South Africans though. In the month of March when I travelled to the Indian Ocean southern city of Port Elizabeth, I left Kenneth Kaunda International Airport seeing a screaming headline in The Post newspaper that read; “Chagwa, agwa”. When I read the full story, I learned that president Edgar Lungu had fainted the previous day while trying to officiate at the women’s day festivities. When I got to PE, the hotel where I spent my first night did not have wi-fi so I missed a whole full day without any update on the president’s health.

So when I had toured a factory in PE the next day, someone had introduced me as visiting from Zambia. At lunch time when I walked to the staff canteen, a forklift operator approached me and coolly told me that he was for Lungu. The last information I had was that the president had not been too well after the women’s day aborted program, and this particular man informed me that he had seen the story on SABC when president Lungu arrived in South Africa for treatment. He went on and asked me about Rhupiah Banda, Levy Mwanawasa, Fredrick Chiluba and Kenneth Kaunda whom he fondly called KK.

I was happy to chat with the man as for once I didn’t have to explain to him where exactly on the map Zambia was or what currency we use. This was a humble forklift operator very knowledgeable about Zambia so the truth is that there are many South Africans who know quite a lot about other nations. Unfortunately the barbaric criminals who know nothing about their own history or that of their neighbours overshadow the rest of South Africans. These are the kind that attack, wound and kill their neighbours.

The role of the rest right thinking South Africans is to carry our deep introspection of their society and demand for change. Change of attitude, school curriculum and so forth. I know there is a school of thought that think that it is the troubled past of apartheid that reflects the brutal nature of some South Africans. I believe the solution will lie in what the SA school curriculum engraves in the minds of the young ones. What we learn at a very young age goes a long way in forming our opinions of things.

The majority of South Africans must stand up and teach the criminals who dent the image of a proud rainbow nation that the law according to how it was given to Moses says “thou shalt not kill”, and not “thou shalt kill thy neighbour”. I believe even the law of Jacob Zuma does not tell any person to kill another human being. South Africa being the second biggest economy in Africa has a bigger role and responsibility in promoting unity. This is a time to promote Pan-Africanism, and not unilateral existence.