Zimbabweans staying in South Africa are joining South Africans in commemorating the historic June 16, 2009 with an engorged heart. We honour and salute the gallant children of Soweto who sacrificed their lives for the liberation of South Africa, but we received a rude shock recently when Johannesburg Council workers drenched young Zimbabweans sleeping outsidThese are the youths of Zimbabwe who ran away from home for their lives after staging spectacular forms of resistance to Robert Mugabes game of oppression.
They did it in the same spirit of the 1976 Soweto uprising.
The only disparity here is that the tyrant was white in South Africa but is black in Zimbabwe.
This putrid attack is the worst form of xenophobic molestation ever inflicted on an African by fellow Africans. Soaking sleeping, distressed and shelterless victims of political persecution with human excretion is worse than setting us ablaze. There is no justification whatsoever for such idiotic and primitive acts of self-hatred.
Scores of MK operatives fleeing Apartheid venom fled through Zimbabwe, including Tsietsi and Thabo Mbeki . We neither burnt them alive nor drenched them with foul smelling mixtures piped from lavatories.
We sheltered and fed them. We never banished them in Repatriation Centres and Church buildings.
It is astonishing that no-one was arresting in connection with the reeking and stinking attack, despite the fact that perpetrators are not difficult to trace. What message is being sent here? It is also interesting to note that the bizzaire attack never received the roaring prominence in the media, as some of us expected since the event is indisputably news worthy.
One daily and a weekend paper carried the story. There was no public condemnation of the attack by the political leadership of South Africa across all political parties.
We however forgive the perpetrators even though we expect justice to prevail.