It ’ s saddening to witness ‘ our liberators ’ attacked

THE first time I boarded a plane, I flew Air Botswana from Francistown to Lusaka, Zambia.

The first time I saw the sea, I was in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. I was fascinated by the vast, seemingly endless blue mass that was Indian Ocean. The first time I slept in a hotel, I actually overslept at Grand Hotel in Abidjan, Ivory Coast.

The first time I watched the Fifa World Cup on a TV screen, I was in the Lagos suburb of Surulere, Nigeria. The first time I entered a state house as a guest, I was in Conakry, Guinea.

While in Guinea, I was privileged to meet the late Miriam Makeba, a music supremo. She once served as Guinean minister of arts and culture under the late President Ahmed Sekou Toure.

Guinea under Sekou Toure believed an African cannot be a refugee in Africa. Besides linguistic barriers, most of us felt at home in Guinea.

From the peasant to the head of state, the people of Guinea, indeed Africans north of Limpopo and the world at large beamed friendship and warmth to us South African exiles.

I vividly remember a friend inviting about 10 of us for his wedding in a village outside Conakry. We salivated at the prospect of a sumptuous meal.

A small bowl of rice and fish arrived, enough to feed only one of us. We were surprised when our host told us the meal was for us all to share. As we left the village, we felt well fed with the feast of love and acceptance.

Guinea was experiencing untold economic hardships but its people were rich in spirit.

Danger was always lurking where we lived outside the town of Mbeya in Tanzania. We feared lions, elephants and buffaloes. But we never feared the people because they protected us.

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is a Swahili phrase meaning “welcome home ”. Every hut we visited in a village, we were sure to hear these words uttered like a mantra. Almost like a ritual, food would follow to seal a declaration of welcome.

My heart aches, and so are the hearts of most former exiles, when we see the people from Zimbabwe, Mozambique, Somalia and other countries, who once protected us, now being murdered and harassed in the land they helped to free.

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