Cry, the Beloved Country: Understanding this Week’s Anarchy in South Africa



 By Clint Archer - Posted at The Cripplegate:

“We are under siege.” This was the text I received yesterday from a friend in Hillcrest, KZN, South Africa. He was not exaggerating.

Hillcrest is a beautiful residential suburb about 25 minutes inland from the coastal city, Durban. It is where I served for fourteen years as the pastor of Hillcrest Baptist Church, until 2019 when I immigrated to the US. We could never have anticipated that our small, peaceful community would be an epicenter of anarchy and violent chaos, as it became yesterday.

The video footage and eyewitness accounts we received from dear friends were simply heartbreaking and disturbing on many levels. Our local mall was looted and stripped bare, stores and restaurants have been vandalized, nearby shopping centers were razed to the ground. Freeways all over KZN province have been blockaded by the rioters’ piles of burning tires. No one can access hospitals, nor can they escape the approaching threat, or make it to the airport. The sky is thick with smoke in many places and the air rings with gunfire.




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