MyPE

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How about love

By

So how about, love?

Since the advent of our democracy, the past month has raised possibly the saddest emotions, which I have ever experienced during my adult life, living in Port Elizabeth, South Africa.

Not only have we seen a dramatic increase in load shedding, which quite frankly does bring a general feeling of uneasiness to our daily lives, but we have witnessed a nation filled with disrespect, intolerance, violence, hatred and greed.

Many of our statues have been damaged or defaced, locally, both the Horse Memorial and Queen Victoria, in Port Elizabeth, fell victim to this awful scourge. If we are able to lack respect for others possessions, we most certainly can lack the respect for life too.

Many of the debates seen lately, revolve around race and racism. To me, the writing was on the wall and it was just a matter of time before we saw the anger and hatred seen on social media turn into reality. Why have we not dealt with this ugly race card yet?

Why are we allowed to continue to have a war of words, without our government stepping in to discourage our people from inciting negativity towards eachother. King Goodwell Zwelitini was allowed to speak his mind that ‘foreigners should be deported from South Africa’, it took a number of murders before government stood up and took notice and tried to put a stop to xenophobic attacks. Racism seems to mainly apply to white South Africans against black South Africans, however racism also applies to xenophobia and homophobia.. Our country bleeds each time negative utterances are made.

An outpouring of love and care has been very evident in and around PE, after the abduction of Jayde Panayiotou, yesterday. However this love has turned to vindictiveness against the perpetrator(s). I too feel that the perpetrators involved need to be brought to book, but incidents like these happen in our country daily and we don’t seem to ever educate our people to change our mindsets and to treasure and nurture life. What makes life so worthless, which allows us to take a life for our own greedy needs?

We live in a country aching with hatred, greed, intolerance and war mongering. How different our lives could be if we educated our nation to embrace love and ubuntu amongst us all; to teach acceptance of our past; acceptance for eachother and to move on with a shared desire to make our country the shining example to the world, which we should to be proud of.

Is strong leadership the answer?

Should we all, each and every one of us, start living with a brand new focus on how we can better our relationships and encourage tolerance?

Or perhaps we should use the simple biblical commandment of John 13:34 “Love each other in the same way that I have loved you.”

Love is all that we need, so, “How about love, South Africa?”

Regards
Janine Meyburgh

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Port Elizabethan

This author is a 'catch-all' for occasional articles and letters written to MyPE. The Author of each article can be found in the signature at the bottom of each individual article.