Johannesburg, South Africa, Sep 16, 2019 / 09:10 am (CNA).- A wave of deadly attacks targeting African foreign nationals in South Africa has caught the attention of national and regional Church leaders, as affected countries have started repatriating their citizens from South Africa.
“It is with dismay that we take note of the recent upsurge in violence against foreign nationals,” the Southern African Catholic Bishops’ Conference said in a statement earlier this month.
“We are facing a rising tide of hatred and intolerance, no difference to the rising tide of hatred in Nazi Germany,” the bishops added.
“If we do not take urgent action to stop it (xenophobic attacks), there will be nothing left.”
“This is not the work of a few criminal elements,” the bishops said of the recent spate of attacks against Nigerians and other foreign nationals in South Africa. At least 12 people have been killed in recent weeks, and hundreds have been arrested for their part in riots demonstrating against foreigners.
“It is xenophobia, plain and simple,” the bishops said.
We Africans must not lose our characteristic love of humanity, the respect for the sanctity of life and solidarity,” Nigeria’s Bishop Emmanuel Badejo, president of the Pan African Episcopal Committee for Social Communications (CEPACS), said last week.
“Nigeria and South Africa must peacefully resolve this unfortunate incident and stop its aggravation,” Badejo told ACI Africa.
The Zambian bishops’ conference has cautioned Zambians not to retaliate against South Africans in Zambia, urging “all Zambians to restrain themselves from any acts of violence and vengeance against South African nationals and their property or business.”
The Inter-Regional Meeting of the Bishops of Southern Africa has also added their voice to the matter, expressing their disappointment about the situation in one of Africa’s most industrialized nations.
“The deplorable actions that we have witnessed cannot be condoned in any way nor can they be hidden behind words that hide the real terror of xenophobia,” IMBISA said.
“We implore the home nations of those affected, not to raise the stakes by responding in revenge with violence,” the Church leaders of IMBISA added. The organization includes bishops from Angola, Botswana, Mozambique, Namibia, South Africa, Swaziland, and Zimbabwe.
Mozambique, Zimbabwe, and Nigeria are among the African countries that have considered repatriating their citizens from South Africa, with reports indicating hundreds of Nigerians successfully repatriated already.
Amid the attacks in South Africa, South Africa’s High Commission in Abuja, Nigeria, and its mission in Lagos have been closed, as the diplomatic staff feel threatened by the possibility of retaliation.
This is not the first time South Africa has experienced such violence. Xenowatch African Centre for Migration & Society, which has been monitoring xenophobia in the country, reports similar peaks in xenophobic attacks in 2008 and 2015.
Xenophobia in South Africa is often sparked by accusations that migrants take away jobs from South Africans. As a result, foreigners, especially Africans, have been targeted, with reports of some deaths and destruction of property.
A version of this story was first reported by CNA’s partner agency, ACI Africa. It has been adapted by CNA.
[…]
This is the politics of garb at its worst! Mother Mary wore a veil. Most nuns and sisters wear a veil. The veil is the symbol of female modesty universally around the world and has been for countless generations. By refusing to allow young Muslim maids to wear their version of the veil, we are tacitly saying that they are unworthy to assume the God given virtue of modesty. It’s a poor and discriminatory decision.
I have no problem at all with the school’s banning “Islamic headscarves.”
“Most nuns and sisters wear a veil.” Yes, because they are nuns and sisters; that doesn’t apply to every woman.
“Mother Mary wore a veil.” There seems to be some discussion about what Jewish women of New Testament times, including Our Lady, wore. But in any event, it was unlikely to be an Islamic headscarf.
“By refusing to allow young Muslim maids to wear their version of the veil, we are tacitly saying that they are unworthy to assume the God given virtue of modesty.” No, we are not tacitly saying that. I could as accurately say “By allowing Muslim girls to wear their version of the veil, we are tacitly agreeing that Moslems have the say-so on what contstitutes modesty, and that anybody who doesn’t weir an Islamic veil is ipso facto immodest.”
I note this from another website: “In a country where 95 percent of the population is Muslim, banning the Islamic headscarf even in a Catholic school is considered unacceptable and against the principle of secularism in education in Senegal.” https://africabriefing.org/2019/09/outrage-as-senegal-catholic-school-expels-scarf-wearing-students/ Oh, reeeeeeally? Telling people who are attending a religious school that they aren’t allowed to wear the headgear of a different religion while at school is somehow “against the principle of secularism?”
To echo Anne, infra, I was at early Mass this morning, the Latin Mass in our Parish, which I find spiritually transformative. Two pews in front was a couple clearly from the Mideast, and the wife was wearing a typical middle eastern headscarf. The tradition may have migrated other places with Islamic conquest but the scarf and its common use is a very old regional tradition, long pre-dating Islam, reflecting modesty. Of all the things that might be considered objectionable about Islam, that is not one of them and I hope Catholics anywhere do not succumb to reactionary bigotry.
Thomas, I was watching a film series about St. Teresa of the Andes & all the women portraying her family in the early 20th Century wore solid black coverings in church-almost from head to toe. It looked very similar to what women wear today in Iran.
I’m assuming that tradition came to South America via Spain & perhaps to Spain originally from the Moorish conquest.
Perhaps considering the sectarian violence Christians have suffered in Africa recently there may be reasons we’re not aware of for this action taken by the school?
Just to mention, my Mennonite friends wear headcoverings all the time, as do the Amish & other Christian girls & women. It’s not so much about modesty, though their dress also reflects that virtue, but they understand the headcovering as more about what women wear in prayer. And since their whole lives are lived in prayer, so the covering is always worn too.