WHERE WAS GOD DURING APARTHEID...?

The beauty about growing up is that one is afforded the privilege to decide what works for them, what they want to believe in and what governs them. I am a firm believer of God and my life is testament that He is alive. I love knowing about the history of the blacks and what they went through for blacks to earn our freedom. Now one cannot revisit history and not get mad, well maybe you’re not emotional like me but I can’t stop tears from running down every time I learn about the gruesome events that happened in that era. I listen to Nomalanga by ntate Caiphus Semenya and I get teary just by thinking about the sacrifices that freedom fighters had to make, some leaving their families in pursuit of a free South Africa. Our freedom was not free.

 

Taking all of this in, I’m convinced that the greatest believers are those that believed God during the apartheid. I mean, how one even begins to believe in a God that protects while every day, their family member dies. You believe in a just and fair God meanwhile, the minority are taking over the country. You believe in a God who doesn’t have favourites, but the blacks are marginalized and white people are living lavishly at the expense of the life of a black man. I really applaud and stand in awe of the Christians that stood firm in their beliefs even when their prayers were rendered obsolete by the (then) current state. Where was God when our people were made to play Jesus and die for the freedom of the coming generation? Where was God when our people were a white man’s entertainment, being forced to impersonate the monkeys that they were called? I thank God that I wasn’t born in that era, because I always ask myself, had I been born in that time, would I be Christian? Would God have trusted me to remain faithful to Him? What type of prayers would I have been praying? And would I not see the bible as nothing but a book with interesting characters? Thank God that I only have to imagine. I will always be eternally grateful for those that laid down their lives so that I can be free; that I can be afforded the privilege to have access to any part of the country without any fear. I salute them.

I would like to leave you with a quote from the late Malcolm X, taken from a conversation between him and Maya Angelou. Mr Malcolm was Muslim, keep that in mind.

“The honorable Elijah Muhammad teaches that integration is a trick. A trick to lull the black man to sleep. We must separate ourselves from the white man, this immoral white man and his white religion. It is a hypocrisy practiced by Christian hypocrites. White Christians were guilty. Portuguese Catholic priests had sprinkled holy water on slave ships, entreating God to give safe passage to the crews and cargoes on journeys across the Atlantic. American slave owners had used the Bible to prove that God wanted slavery, and even Jesus Christ admonished slaves to “render unto their masters” obedience. As long as the black man looked to the white man’s God for his freedom, the black man would remain enslaved. (Malcolm X: 1960)