I have read in the press and seen in motion and still images, the horrific xenophobic situation in South Africa. I saw someone set ablaze and another man being hacked as other assailants beat the poor fellow to the last ebb of his conscious. I saw women and children running for dear life with a middle-aged man wielding a huge hammer in chase.

South Africa’s envoy to Zambia Moses Chikane has condemned the killings saying they were being orchestrated by a disgruntled group of people.
I cannot just believe that the situation by our South African comrades could escalate and degenerate to such levels.

The South Africans who are killing foreigners accuse outsiders of taking away their jobs. At least 22 people have been brutally killed by irate mobs in areas such as Alexanderia.

The attacks on foreigners are an unfair action and deserve condemnation. I believe that South Africans should be last people to attack foreigners. They must be the first ones to embrace them on the contrary.

My thoughts take me to the pre-independence and apartheid era when gallant men and women of South Africa fought the oppressors. Neighbouring countries sheltered the exiled freedom fighters for many years. Have South Africans now forgotten how many years Thabo Mbeki and Jacob Zuma spent in the Townships of Zambia, for example?

Zimbabwe, whose economic refugees South Africans are humiliating played a critical role in their independence. Some people sacrificed their lives for South Africa’s freedom.

Perpetrators of this violence must be fair with themselves and Africa at large. They owe Zimbabweans, Zambians, Namibians, Mozambique and many other places gratitude because without these people, freedom and democracy would absent to talk about in South Africa.

The assailants have a duty to reciprocate and host those foreigners now. They should blame the appropriate people for the unemployment factor. They must not vent their anger on unarmed, defenceless and innocent people. Driving away foreigners in such a brutal manner is not a magic bullet to give them jobs!

In any case, those killers should realize that God just created mankind. God did not create South Africans, Zambian, Zimbabwean or whatever. It is selfish mankind who created these tags and separated God’s own creation.
The violence in South Africa may undermine all the achievements this country has recorded.