South Africans really do love to talk about racism.  To be able to talk about racism and also look at pictures of two pretty models is even better.  So it is not surprising that newspapers, the blogosphere and the tweetscape have been full of the story of the racist comments of Jessica dos Santos and Tshidi Thamana. 

“History repeats itself, first as tragedy second as farce.” This statement, an observation on the nature of revolutions by Karl Marx in his pamphlet The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Napoleon (1852), seems particularly apt in the context of current crises within South Africa’s ruling African National Congress.

Empowerment: a word that has been filling and directing my thoughts in the past few months for various reasons, but also for the simple reason of exploring what it means to young South Africans in 2012. Empowerment has become one of the more loosely used terms of post apartheid South African society and is understood in many different and often contradictory ways, depending on where you are in the ladder of life.

Last week there was public outrage that seven Soweto teenagers had gang-raped of a 17-year old handicapped girl.  To add insult to injury they filmed their actions with a cellphone and circulated the film at school.  This was not a bright thing to do, because it made it possible for the authorities to identify the boys.  Their parents and elders protested that their boys “are not capable of this behaviour.” Yet it is incontrovertibly them in full cellphone technicolour.  The girl had been raped on two previous occasions and her mother had had no success in reporting the matter to the police, but was sent away without sympathy or investigation. 

For us South Africans the miracle of the ending of Apartheid and the transition to our new democracy is the background against which we live. For those who fought in the struggle, and even for many who watched and waited in anxiety for Apartheid to fall, the support from outside the country was critical.

I have never been particularly drawn to the devotion to the Divine Mercy. The artwork associated with it does not inspire me.  Neither am I dawn to the set prayers that are presented as part of this particular devotion. So I was not expecting to be blown away by the encyclical document ‘Dives in Misericordia’ (Rich in Mercy) (Blessed Pope John Paul II’s encyclical on Divine Mercy), but this document moved me to tears.

A funny thing happens between each Gospel’s account of Christ’s Passion and Death and the Resurrection: the focus of the Gospel shifts from Jesus to the Disciples. Before the Crucifixion we read ‘Jesus did this...then he did that...and then...”. After Jesus is buried we read how, for example, three women went to the tomb on the third day, or how two disciples went home to Emmaus. And in each case, as we know, they encounter the Risen Christ.

This Reflection was part of a series of Lent Reflections sent to people on our mailing list through out the Lent season . If you would also like to receive click here.

I bared my back to those who beat me.
I did not stop them when they insulted me,
when they pulled out the hairs of my beard
and spit in my face.
But their insults cannot hurt me
because the Sovereign Lord gives me help.
I brace myself to endure them.
I know that I will not be disgraced.

(Isaiah 50:6-7)

At the heart of our faith is the encounter with God. -We believe that God came and lived amongst us as one of us. As we approach Easter we are remembering the highpoint of Jesus’ life - the crucifixion. In my own preparation for Easter I have been thinking about the person of Jesus, a man radically committed to a life of love, to preaching a gospel of equality and hope to people. When we think of who Jesus was and what he said, it is hardly surprising that he ended up being crucified.

As you gaze around you in church today you will be looking at many people who are from the other side of the Limpopo – Zimbabweans, black and white, who have left their homeland and have settled temporarily or permanently in South Africa.  I was recently in a restaurant near Cape Agulhas, the most southerly tip of Africa, and both the waiters were Zimbabwean exiles!  People from that beautiful country have found their way into every corner of our beautiful country, usually working hard, struggling to make ends meet, sending money back home, and waiting for the right moment to return.