When The Defecator Forgets

It's easy to denounce the white man's violence against the African. It becomes tricky however, If the violence on the African is by another African.

Apartheid ended over two decades ago. Most South Africans visiting violence on fellow Africans today didn't even live under apartheid rule. Or if they did, were too young to understand. And so, we cannot blame apartheid for the violence of these generation of South Africans. 

Young South Africans seem to have forgotten the sacrifices of those African countries, whose citizens they now maim, in the struggle for the freedom they now enjoy. But we must remind them.

As the Yorubas would say, 'It's the man who defecates that forgets. The man who removes the excrement does not.'

We must tell the unruly, hateful and forgetful ones among these generation of South Africans to pick up the history books. And maybe, just maybe, they'll know why they're the least people to deny other Africans the same freedom their fathers were denied during apartheid.

- Mark Ademola Israel