The Sunday News
Lubalenkosi Yvette Mpofu
I WAS walking past the spaza shops when all of a sudden I heard thudding footsteps behind me and my heart skipped a beat. A fierce-looking man who had a worn out t-shirt ran past me.
The t-shirt had patches of two colours, black and white. It looked as if he had been dragged on the black tarred road.
All of a sudden a mob came behind him carrying machetes. I could not hear what they were saying as my heart was beating so hard but I could just see lips moving.
The thing that made me get scared the most is that parts of the mob were now looking at me as if I was the next target. I swiftly got out of their way. I thought to myself that I am now seeing the xenophobic attacks.
I thought the man was going to escape but it was just a minor thought. The mob finally caught up with him and it was a disturbing sight what they did to him.
He was tripped and he fell on his back. They tied his hands and some of the people were spitting on him and beating him up with sjamboks.
He was bleeding profusely, it was as if it was a massacre yet it was just from one person. They necklaced the man with an old tyre.
A large man approached the necklaced man carrying a lighter. I knew what was going to happen next when I heard a woman screaming.
I immediately looked the other way and I saw a woman carrying a baby on her back running. She too was being chased by a mob that was a little smaller than that of the necklaced man.The woman did not seem athletic at all but the sjamboks and machetes the mob was carrying made it seem as if running was in her blood.
It was pretty clear that the baby towel was not tied properly. She kept on looking at her hands that were holding the ends of the towel together.
I felt my heart drop all the way to my stomach and my mouth open wide, so much that it was hard to close it immediately.
The baby slipped off the woman’s back. The woman was afraid of going back to get her baby.
The next sight was one that I would love to erase from my memory. The mob shouted “umntwana wekwerekwere! likwerekwere, bulala!”
The woman was screaming and crying non-stop as the mob surrounded the crying baby. A man came out of the mob carrying an axe and the next thing I saw the man throwing something that looked like a ball and something was dripping from it. It landed on the feet of the woman.
She screamed, “mwana wangu!” (my child!) Her screams were piercing. The screams were full of pain.
The ball was her baby’s head. She could not run any further. She just went down on her knees. She wept bitterly. I felt the woman’s pain as she kept on screaming over and over again. I found it hard to move, the fear that was within me was indescribable.
My heart’s pounding got louder than the sounds from the mob.
There was the fire from the necklaced man, the voices of the two mobs and the screams and cries of the woman.
All of a sudden it snapped inside of me; “WHY WOULD A BLACK PERSON DO THIS TO ANOTHER BLACK PERSON?”
I carried that thought all the way to my small apartment. My cousin had already packed our necessary belongings and she said we should hit the road.
She said she had been contacted by a friend of hers who was on her way back to Zimbabwe, Magwegwe West in Bulawayo where we lived.
I did not care if we did not say goodbye to our neighbours or left the door unlocked. I just wanted us to leave and go back home where there is peace.
On the road I kept on asking myself why a human being would do that to another human being? After all we are the same, the only difference is our nationalities.
I had lived in South Africa for five years. Of course the South Africans were not keen on having other people in their land since they complained about “us foreigners” taking their homes, jobs and land. Some even went to the extent that “we” took away their husbands or wives but to go to the extent of killing even an innocent baby who does not understand the difference in nationalities is just savage.
I was now wondering to myself how these attackers sleep at night. Does that person who actually necklaced the man and lit him up use the same hands to eat? I found it disgusting that a human being would do such a thing, do they not have a conscience?
I was happy that I was on the road back home but I was worried about my fellow friends who were also foreigners like me.
Before we can be labelled as Zimbabweans, Mozambicans, Malawians, Ethiopians, Nigerians, above everything else, we are Africans.
So having one African fight another just because of different nationalities is a shameless blow in the face of common sense. I felt like crying and I just hoped and prayed that God would keep them safe and bring them safely back to their homes.
The thing that made me even angry towards these attackers was that they honoured Nelson Mandela who said: “if a person can be taught how to hate they can also be taught how to love.”
They loved Mandela yet they did not follow his teachings.
One thing for sure if Tata Mandela was alive he would not have allowed this to happen, he was going to be our saviour . . .
