This week marks 25 years since the horrific U.S. bombing of the Amiriyah shelter in Iraq. At least 408 women and children died.
As we consider what has helped fuel the rage and hostility of extremists like ISIS, we can point to concrete events like the bombing of Amiriyah. It clearly does not justify the evil done by ISIS, but it does help us explain it.
It occurred to me: South Africa is no longer under legal apartheid, but apartheid still thrives here — through de facto economic segregation. There are no signs that say “whites only” as they did under apartheid, but there has also been no move by the black government to restore the people to the land that was taken from them.
One question haunted me: How does a white Christian South African live in this apartheid from day to day? 1) One must actively fight injustice, or 2) she must embrace a theology that has nothing to do with it.
I don’t know who posted it. But on Feb. 2, as I customarily do, I checked into Facebook to see what my friends were talking about. A post popped up about 86 children slaughtered in Dalori, Nigeria, by Boko Haram, the terrorist group that kidnapped upwards of 300 girls on April 14, 2014. The children, the post dated Jan. 31 noted, were burned alive.
I reflexively shuttered. How was is possible that is was Feb. 2 and I had heard NOTHING of children burned alive, not on any news network?
If we walk through Latin America and Caribe, and of course Africa and Europe, wherever black people are present, we see how much they are below the possibilities of ascension, trapped in the lowest classes of social scale. Some nations where there are black people in the population, even if in incipient number in some of them, are Peru, Ecuador, Venezuela, Colombia, Mexico, Haiti, Dominican Republic, Cuba, and Brazil. In all the nations cited, blacks are inserted in the lowest social strata. Therefore, we must ask an important question: Why in Latin America and Caribe black people are always in disadvantage?
“There is nowhere a human being should be allowed to enslave others.”
This is a statement made by Burundian Catholic Archbishop Simon Ntamwana, referring to the Burundian president who was seeking an extra term in power. The archbishop was implicitly calling the president's actions unjust and unacceptable.
Indeed, the term limit crisis in Africa needs to be considered in the same light as the liberation, decolonization, and democratization movements against slavery and apartheid. Similarly to those struggles in history, today's term limit crisis in Africa is characterized by people struggling against oppression and political injustice.
Allan Boesak is not only a South African theologian; he is a true son of the African soil and a world renown ecumenical and public figure. Since his return from abroad after obtaining his doctorate in theology at Kampen, Holland, in 1976 he has had a tremendous influence on theological and socio-political discourse globally.
I recently spent a week on Robben Island, the prison where Nelson Mandela spent the first 18 of his 27 years imprisonment. The Warehouse gathered together about 80 peace activists from around the world and South Africa to discuss, reflect, and meditate about the struggle against the apartheid system. Robben Island is now a World Heritage protected museum visited by thousands of tourists every year. It is used to teach current and future generations about lessons from this painful episode of South African history. Standing in those tiny prison cells, I travelled back in time and imagined life under apartheid: the mere injustice of the system, the dehumanizing treatment, the humiliation.
The couple has found that part of their calling in these schools is not just to the children, but also to the teachers who serve those children. Cheryl has taken to performing regular acts of kindness for the teachers — showing up in the teachers’ lounge with a plate of cookies, or stopping by the main office to give a hug to the administrator in charge of discipline.
“I tell her, ‘I’m sure you’ve had a rough day today. Can I give you a hug?’ I just never knew it would make such a difference. [They] feel so supported,” said Cheryl.
The men in black uniforms stand behind their prisoners, who kneel on the beach. The kneeling men wear bright orange jumpsuits. The men wearing black, terrorists affiliated with ISIS, hold knives. A subtitle on the video reads: “The people of the cross, the followers of the hostile Egyptian church.” The spokesman addresses the camera, and then the prisoners are beheaded.
For years, I’ve had a rocky relationship with the news. I love to know what’s going on in the world, but I can’t help but notice that the news sources I read all present the story from a definite slant. More and more over the last couple years, I’ve felt like I’m doing battle with the newspaper every morning. Each day, the media machine is telling me who I should vote for, what to buy, what new disease to fear, and who my country should kill.