Pride takes a mighty fall

The taxi carrying me to meetings at Howard University in Washington DC had clearly seen better days. As usual, taxi drivers are my barometer on domestic and foreign affairs and we struck up a lively conversation, this native of Ethiopia and "my brother from the south", as he called me.

We talked about continental soccer and Nelson Mandela. He had never heard about President Jacob Zuma (apart from his many wives) and thinks US President Barack Obama is in trouble from the Republican opposition.

The rickety car shook violently as he slammed on brakes after another taxi swerved in front of us. Unholy hand signals were exchanged. These East Coast taxi commandeers make their Johannesburg counterparts look like geriatric bus drivers for the local Sunday school picnic.

Then he nailed me: "So, why do you people kill Ethiopians and Somalis in your country?"

I was stunned into silence. I found myself deeply embarrassed and somewhat emotional. "It was not me" would be the wrong answer and "there are many decent people in South Africa" would be a useless defence. I wanted to say sorry but that would be meaningless to a man who, while he earns very little in his adopted country, can go to bed safely at night with his family, not fearing that xenophobic savages will come to burn his taxi and murder his loved ones.

I sensed him looking at me in the rear-view mirror. Mercifully, he did not press for an answer for he probably saw the teary eyes and dejected look of his passenger . I climbed out at the main entrance of the university, still choked-up, and probably tipped him too much.

It used to be when you travelled abroad you were proud of your country. Taxi drivers from Eastern Europe to West Africa would light up and share their admiration of Mandela. I was often struck by their knowledge of cricket stars like Jonty Rhodes or rugby greats like Chester Williams. In a short period of time, the country everybody seemed to despise for its "apart from" policies became the darling of the world. Today they do not know my president, but they know about the violence, crime and corruption. They still know Oscar Pistorius, but as the man who shot his girlfriend, not the Olympian "Blade Runner" who impressed the world.

With the taxi encounter I discovered again my passion for South Africa, the need to defend a broken country, not its evils but its goodness. The new Martin Luther King Jnr Memorial in Washington DC haspowerful quotations from the slain civil rights leader to put such narrow bonds into perspective. One reads: "If we are to have peace on earth our loyalties must become ecumenical rather than sectional. Our loyalties must transcend our race, our class, our tribe and our nation, and this means we must develop a world perspective."

What such wisdom suggests is that the low-level war against foreigners in our towns is, without question, a failure to develop these ecumenical loyalties among our youth. I have no doubt many of those looting and killing foreign nationals lack an education (if not schooling) that developed a broader embrace of humanity. Yet if we were to be brutally honest, our intolerance of the poor from other countries cuts across classes.

We should encourage school leaders and teachers to actively integrate the lives and stories of children from other countries - refugees from Mozambique, Zimbabwe, Somalia and further afield - into lessons. A talented, opportunistic teacher would make the lessons more interesting by having children share songs, symbols and ghost stories from the various countries in the classroom. Home-stays should be encouraged where South African children take home a student from another country; there is nothing like close-up human interaction to overcome prejudice.

A socially conscious teacher will teach children about the contributions of countries in the region and across the continent to our freedom. Such a teacher would also provide learners with a vocabulary to resist harm to foreigners in a crisis and strategies for speaking out and acting against such narrow loyalties. Incorporate the humanity of the strangers in our country into the curriculum of our schools and conscience of our society. Police will deal with the short-term crisis; teachers have to take the long view.