Bishop Joseph Mary Kizito of Aliwal, a leading Catholic bishop in South Africa says the country needs to start looking at migrants “as people who are in need of help.”
Bishop Kizito is the liaison bishop for migrants and refugees at the Southern Africa Bishop’s Conference.
South Africa has been undergoing a series of xenophobic attacks against migrants from other African countries. The cause of these attacks are the migrants being blamed for crime and stealing jobs from South Africans. There are nearly four million foreign-born people in South Africa, which has a population of 60 million.
Kizito says South Africa has lost its sense of “Ubuntu,” a Zulu phrase that means “humanity towards others.”
The Bishop was speaking in a workshop on migration that took place in the Diocese of Bethlehem and Cross-Borders. He called for compassion toward refugees because these are people fleeing “poverty, crime, political instability, wars, famine, climate changes, and more” in their home countries.