Human Rights in the Time of Xenophobia
I find myself sitting in a café on Durban Road in Cape Town and wondering whether or not I am in the same country as the terrible xenophobic attacks. Coldplay’s “Yellow” is playing in the background, the “Food Network” is playing on the muted televisions, and everyone is absorbed in their own conversation with the occasional eyeing of what is happening on the street or in the café. I have always wondered if money can buy you happiness, and thought that the principle was too black or white. What I have come to realise by being in this café and watching couples walk in for their lunchtime date, or friends walk in laughing at raised volumes, or watching the homeless person on the road battling the cruel cape winds, is that money can buy you blindness. I am flicking down my Facebook news feed and almost breaking out into tears in public (something I never do) because of the images some of my friends are posting about the attacks in Kwa Zulu Natal, and I am surprised by the nu