Within a matter of a few hours last week, I had cause to both be deeply ashamed of my country and enormously proud.
The reason for the shame was the emotions that poured out of me while watching our Law Enforcement officers manhandle fellow Africans, simply because they are not SOUTH Africans.
I found it really difficult to watch refugees being forcibly removed from St. George’s Mall last week.
It broke my heart to watch heart-wrenching videos of a woman, with a baby on her back, holding onto her partner for dear life, while police officers were dragging him away.
And then another video of a woman being arrested and the baby on her back being forcibly removed. What kind of person does a thing like that?
If the officer in question is reading this, then I’m sorry for being so brutal about it.
I was not present and don’t really have context for what happened in the heat of the moment.
And I am on record with my general praise for Law Enforcement and the work that you do, generally speaking.
I have also tackled some of the incidents that I found questionable. And I’m afraid this was one such incident.
Never mind that these are fellow Africans having fled hardships and possible death, they are fellow human beings, in need of compassion and sympathy.
I get that the sit-in protest had been going on for a long time and that the demands weren’t exactly reasonable, but neither was the response.
I saw so many comments, but none directed at the owner of the Waldorf Arcade mall who brought the court application to have them removed.
Now again, I understand his motivation, but it doesn’t mean I agree with it. It says that our world has gotten itself so caught up in the capitalist trap, that our humanity is forced to take a back seat to profits.
And that’s the saddest part about it. Most of us look at a situation like that with detachment and disinterest.
We might acknowledge that it is sad and then we move right on.
And yet we wish for empathy and help when a crisis affects us personally.
The fact is, every crisis involving humanity should affect us.
We can’t do anything about all of them, but this happened on our doorstep.