SOUTH AFRICA’S FOREIGN ELEMENT: XENOPHOBIC OR CRIMINAL?

The recent xenophobic attacks upon Foreign -Nationals by locals in Soweto; looting and killings, due to a shooting and murder of a local youngster, who was shot and murdered  by a Foreign National store owner,  raises a number of questions about South Africa’s diplomatic stance on Trade Relations  between locals and  Foreign Elements within South Africa’s borders.

A number of Foreigners are striving in their business exchange with the support  of locals here in South Africa. Most of these foreigner-nationals are known to be of Pakistani and Somali nationalities and descents 

Generally asked instigating questions about the foreign-national's tuck-shops in South African  neighbourhoods:

• Who is responsible for these Foreign Nationals ?
•   Why do they sell their goods so cheaply?
•  Why is the government quiet about their trade in our neighbourhoods ?
• Who regulates their trading position within the South African business framework
• Is love and understanding enough to keep our fellow foreign brothers and sisters taking bread-and-butter  from the locals’ hands.
• When it comes to generating money, who comes first? South Africans or Foreigners?
•  Does South Africa belong to South Africans?  
• Who is funding this ubiquitous franchise? 
• Where exactly do these foreign-nationals come from?
• Who has more 'rights' when trading within South Africa?  
• Are the foreign-national taking South Africans' jobs?
• Is the South African government ignoring its citizen's grievances on jobs and job creation?
• Why are these foreign-national hiring their own countrymen?  
• One last fundamental question is: Are Islamic core taking over the South African monetary generator by erasing the nationality element – the people of South Africa?

I remember writing a piece commiserating  with our foreign brothers and sisters :

‘Xenophobia attacks are a Human Rights violation in any country. South Africans are faced with a quandary of finding jobs and fighting cheap labor. Foreign nationals are not to blame for being used as tools of cheap labor, because their destitution is a position of exploitation. Our government is not fully in touch with ordinary South Africans that roam in our streets daily. The South African government must come up with a strategic plan that will benefit hard working South Africans and those who are prepared to build our country, by creating peace in their families and community, thus prosper in their own country.’

The South African government needs to gather the business community and money generators in our communities into talks about the Economic Situation in South Africa, Economic Building and National Investment.

A claratone call for an "Economic Codesa" has been heard from key business and political leaders.

Is the South African government listening?     

WORD THE FOREIGN ELEMENT QUESTION REVOLUTION

Linda Sakazi Thwala

THE MECCA OF POETRY

THE MECCA OF POETRY 

I am the Mecca of Poetry

She is my wordy lover –

And, I am her pilgrim

I go inside her – Poetry

With expectations, hope

My soul will be rectified

I am the Mecca of Poetry

With the fancy tower,

That leans – straightened

I go inside her – Poetry

Taken by my pilgrimage

My path of strength

I am a scholar, a lover –

A friend, a loner, an icon

That is a Mecca of Poetry

Make me be more – Poetry

Make me feel more – Poetry

Poetry, you are my Mecca

I go inside you  – Poetry

With expectations, hope

My soul will be satisfied

By_ Linda Sakazi Thwala

A BIG "IF" OF POETRY

Poetry has always been a cushioning filler to everything I did and do in my life. As a teenager, poetry helped shape my mental fortitude, and thinking sinews, poetry helped in hardening my heart, to the invincible state it now resides. From  the age of 12, after spending time with my friends, I would sit alone in my room and read the ‘Greats’ of poetry, from Shakespeare,  Alfred Lord Tennyson, to Rudyard Kipling. 

Like the 'Greats' of poetry, my thoughts and writings, do not dwell in another's space_but dwell in its own spiritual realm. It all started with a big "IF"........


If—

By_ Rudyard Kipling

(‘Brother Square-Toes’—Rewards and Fairies)

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream—and not make dreams your master;
If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: ‘Hold on!’

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with Kings—nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son!

 
         Source: A Choice of Kipling's Verse (1943)