Injury to one is an injury to all

LAST Sunday, celebrity Somizi Mhlongo stormed out of a Grace Bible Church service in Soweto after a guest pastor started making homophobic remarks in his sermon. The only question is why more congregants didn’t leave as well.

The truth is we are selective in our morality and our outrage. Ours is a young country built on the premise of tolerance and understanding of diversity. Our constitution enshrines exactly this, understanding not just that the wounds inflicted by our bloody past must heal, but also that a successful nurturing of our diversity makes us a powerful tool to achieve a success that is still elusive in so many other parts of the world.

We should have stood as one to condemn what happened in Soweto last Sunday, just as we should all have expressed our abhorrence at the vandalism of mosques in Cape Town. We should also all see through the facile excuses being tendered this week in Sandton at the proposed construction of a mosque there. We need to be awake to prejudice, especially our own. An injury to one is ultimately an injury to all.

None of us should need any reminding of this. Rwanda lost 1 million souls in 100 days at the very time we were celebrating our liberation.

Pastor Martin Niemöller’s injunction during the dark days of Nazi Germany still rings true. In his words: “First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out, because I was not a socialist. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out, because I was not a trade unionist. Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out, because I was not a Jew. Then they came for me. But there was no one left to speak for me.”

The price of our freedom is eternal vigilance against any form of prejudice be it xenophobia, homophobia, Islamophobia or anti-Semitism.