South African rapper, singer, songwriter, and actress Sho Madjozi, real name Maya Christinah Xichavo is in the middle of the fence in relation to the current volatile situation taking place in the country.
She’s in flames, engulfed with mass protests, looting of foreign national shops, murders, and rape.
“The truth is complicated. More than one thing can be true at once. But that’s not what we want. Right now you can’t say crime is rampant in the CBD without being called xenophobic and you can’t say stop xenophobia without seeming to condone that crime,” – Sho Madjozi.
She says the reason we have bad leaders is that we want bad answers. We want people to say “foreign nationals are completely innocent,” or to say “foreign nationals are completely responsible for the crime.
“We get dishonest leaders because we want things to be black and white and the truth very seldom is. Good leaders would require us to be more nuanced. Good leaders would require us to understand that more than one thing can be true at once. And that some things can be partially true.
“But good leaders are not successful because we don’t want the nuanced, complex and multidimensional truth. It’s not neat and easy to consume or attack. This is why we either get inactive leaders or populists” she says.
Sho Madjozi says that saying there’s a crime in the Central Business Districts and that something needs to be done about it is true.
“Even saying in some areas a lot of that crime is perpetuated by other Africans is true. But saying people are criminal BECAUSE they are foreign is Xenophobic. South African men killed Uyinene and Leighandre. South African men rape and murder and steal etc.
“But I think to deny that foreign nationals are responsible for a lot of the crime in certain areas fuels the anger of people who witness this daily. It makes them feel they have no choice but to act on it themselves. At the same time, allowing South Africans to believe that other Africans are responsible for most or all of the crime here is just false and also feeds into violence,” Sho Madjozi says via her Twitter account @ShoMadjozi.
She says that she grew up in SA, Tanzania and Senegal.
“Yes I’m South African, but as a woman, I’m well aware of the violence of SAn men, as a Tsonga person I can relate to feelings of being othered in this country,” Sho Madjozi says in a series of tweets.
MGOZI.co.za