(JOHANNESBURG) — Tributes are being paid following the death of Sam Nzima, the South African photographer who took the iconic image of a black high school student carrying a fatally wounded fellow pupil away from the gunfire of apartheid police in 1976. Nzima, 83, died Saturday night in a hospital in the northwestern city of…
via Sam Nzima, Iconic South African Photographer, Dies at 83 — TIME
Today I was all set to write a post on Mothers Day and I still will but first I want to comment on this. There has been an ongoing struggle in South Africa and one thing that Nelson Mendela said will always stick with me and that was his biggest mistake was going along with his captures.
Yesterday, I got to speak to a gentlemen who told me he believed that South Africans did not like African Americans but the truth is both groups have struggled. When people have tensions on their side and you have tension on yours than it makes it very hard for a healthy collaboration.
Both groups have to be willing to say, “I love you in spite of our differences. In spite of the hate that is ravaging our community and even our souls.” In the video you’ll see that even though the people did not have guns the officers, many black, still used their full extent of power.
They didn’t care that the people were not armed. Their vulnerability was not sufficient.
Today, we have a new way to bring our condition, our concerns, and our liberation to the forefront. It doesn’t have to be through street protest, shootings, stabbings, and set ups. This is contrary to the direction we need to go in today.
In honor of Sam Nzima’s death we can demonstrate the new power of protest. Through formal education, self-education, love of people beyond our borders, loving ourselves, saving our neighbors, intentional reparations and rebuking of human sacrifice. We all in word and deed should perpetuate a message of hope and the fulfillment of dreams. Looking past the things that divide us and toward the things that unite us.
Several years ago I was at a Catholic Church that had a Brown Bag Ministry and people of faith and of no faith fed the homeless community. While meeting them and loving them I realized that poverty and peace were not reconcilable. Even though many of them… From every race and age had accepted their poverty, I could not.
I in turn suffered emotionally for the things that I knew they could do little about. Me and my son along with many others would go to the store and spend our own money to buy them food and clothes. This wasn’t to our Glory, it was to Gods. One lesson that I learned in worship reemerged when I watched the video of Sam Nzima. That is when you look in the face of the people you are serving… See Elohim, El, Yahweh.
When we think of taking action against people see Elohim, El, Yahweh.
When we think of starving people see Elohim, El, Yahweh.
When we think of hurting families see Elohim, El, Yahweh.
This pathway of thought is to all of our saving. Where there is love there is a way.
