Today, 25 May, is Africa Day. We are supposed to be celebrating, honouring and respecting. We are supposed to be unifying on this day. Instead, we are full of shame. Instead we are full of nightmares. Instead, fellow Africans are being forced onto busses and trains and taken back to places that are no longer their homes. Instead, thugs steal other people’s dustbins to transport the loot they have stolen from a Somali shop in Khayelitsha; the Somali having been warned and forced to flee. Our police stations are overflowing this morning; not with criminals, but with refugees. Today up to 14000 people in Cape Town alone are displaced, homeless and living in fear.
Our government has failed us. It has failed the poor. It has failed foreigners and locals alike. I am filled with anger. But mostly I am full of shame.