Why Mozambique? Print E-mail
Thursday, 28 May 2009 12:32

28

May

2009

This is the question that most South Africans have asked me over the past 9 years of involvement in the Manica province of Mozambique. It is not a question really, but rather a polite way to express reservation or decline from becoming involved. Almost 90% of people I have approached in Johannesburg have replied with an implicit or explicit “no, I would rather help my own people first”. Now I am heavily in favour of helping ones immediate neighbours, something I also do whether it is my domestic, security guard, waiter, local church, traffic light beggar or nearest informal settlement- it is surely a good habit to help the needy you see around you every day. However, consider the following reflections and questions, and if you still feel that people in Joburg should not help Mozambicans, I will be happy and accept your position. Here goes:
•    As consumers we don’t mind living in a global village, we never deny buying coffee from Rwanda, Cocoa from Brazil, veggies from Israel, cars from Japan, all kinds of junk from China, i-pods from the USA or prawns from Mozambique. I have only one friend that only buys local out of principle. So if we enjoy the benefits of a global village, do we not also share global responsibilities?
•    South Africans are discovering Mozambique as tourist destination. When the white beaches of Tofo, Bara or Pemba calls, it seems okay to forget about the struggling restaurants and dirty hotels of Margate and Balito! So its fine to play in Mozambique, but helping would take things a little too far?
•    During the apartheid years, South Africa was heavily involved in the Mozambican civil war. Renamo would never have been able to do all the human and infrastructural damage they did without the help of the South African Defence Force. Whether South Africa killed Samora Machel whose plane crashed in our country, or not: South Africa is as responsible as anybody else for making Mozambique the poorest country in the world in 1990. The government we (and our parents) voted for, destroyed Mozambique; can we as today’s generation simply close our eyes and ears and say: “oh that’s history, lets forget about that”?
•    In 2008 South Africa witnessed the most terrible acts of Xenophobia. A Mozambican was burned to death simply for being a Mozambican. Is this not the end result of trying to keep South Africa a separate (apartheid) country isolated from its neighbouring countries? Do we really want a impenetrable border so we can keep all the goodies to ourselves?
•    During the apartheid years thousands of South Africans found refuge in Zimbabwe and Mozambique, is it fair to now turn our backs on the very same neigbours that was part of our struggle?
•    Was South Africa not partly built on the sweat and lives of millions of Mozambican mineworkers?
•    Consider the millions of Mozambicans and Zimbabweans living in South Africa and Johannesburg at this very moment. Is it really an intellectually superior argument to deny our togetherness and argue for separatist behaviour? Is that what reality is showing us? Who drew the borderlines between Zimbabwe, South Africa and Mozambique? It is a colonial event of (perhaps unfortunate) history- it was not a predestined master plan from the hand of God.
•    Who is my neighbour? If I live in Randburg for example, is it only people living in Randburg, or even only those living in my street? Or do I include Zandspruit the nearest informal settlement to my house? Shall I refuse to help people in KZN because I live in Gauteng? Should I refuse to help people in Mamelodi or Pretoria because I live in Joburg? Should I refuse to help someone in Hillbrow because it is further from my house than Zandspruit?
•    And if I have this geographical morality, the question still remains: what am I currently doing with and for these close neighbours of mine? Am I that involved in their lives that I do not have any more time or money for others? If so, and I mean it: great! But I have found that of the 90% that plays the geographical absconding card, perhaps one percent is really that involved ‘at home’.
•    Christians, and most people in Joburg I speak to claims some sort of adherence to Christianity are also in a peculiar situation: their main outreach verse state implicitly to go out to Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria and to the ends of the world! How Mozambique falls outside of that, I don’t get- is it too close or to far?
•    The question who is my brother or who is my neighbour is one that we all have to figure out. Surely it is not just your biological brothers and sisters; surely it is not just the four houses that borders your yard? So, where do you draw the line between brother and stranger? Where do you draw the line between friend and enemy? And once you’ve drawn it- what is your responsibility towards the stranger or enemy?
•    Is it, from a philanthropical or religious view, good to only help where we see an immediate return on investment or personal gain?  I think, even for selfish reasons South Africans should still help their neighbouring countries, but is that really how we want to argue it? Is selfish return really the drive behind our reaching out and taking hands with people supposedly so different from us?
•    Do you not discover something of God’s love when you get out of your comfy spot in heaven (perhaps Sandton or RSA) and go to meet the ordinary folks on planet earth (Mozambique)? I’m not saying you have to, I’m asking if you can imagine learning new things about yourself and God, when you go to meet the stranger that is actually (perhaps) your brother. I wonder if God also has favourites? Imagine Jesus only reaching out to the angels in heaven- kind of a funny idea.
•    If we should consider the ozone layer very far from our homes, or the whales in far off oceans, or polar bears on the north pole, we can surely not from some position of  geographic pseudo-morality distance ourselves from any group of human beings on this planet- never mind Pingi, Short, Prieska, Zambito, Louise, Paizinho, Alilo, Buna, Mariana, Rafael, Nelson, Mariano, Machapa or Takudzwa living in Manica.
•    So if you don’t want to be involved: please just say: “No thanks”. Don’t try and argue a point about kilometres and border posts.  Asking the ‘why Mozambique’ question is a statement that really only tricks your own mind, and it’s a little bit offensive to all of us that have been (wrongly? Stupidly?) involved in Mozambique over the past nine years.

That’s me- please excuse any excessive emotion, attitude or resentment- but I thought it might be good to simply write honestly and share my heart and thoughts on this recurring topic.
 

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