A culture of rejection?

Kilton Moyo

Have you ever observed that in every community or society, people are put into little boxes according to how we view them? In most cases these boxes are characterised with dehumanising stigma and classify many people as rejects. Once you show some characteristic that seems to be going against the norm in that community, you are put into a box and what follows thereafter is total rejection. We have so many such boxes in our communities. These are responsible for the high levels of rejection in our society today.

Our society is that of condemnation, rejection, vilifying and throwing away each other like that. Association is by these boxes.

It is no longer communal but it’s by clicks and these fuel a lot of tensions and divisions in communities. My challenge is how to help or cleanse our cultures from the spirit of rejection and dehumanisation of our people.

Today I just want to show you a few of these boxes that we have created and locked up a lot of people in them. We have created a number of “prisons” in our communities where we have judged and sentenced people without even attempting to help them. The “love your neighbour as yourself concept” of life has been thrown out of windows and we have allowed a strange spirit that has wrought so much havoc in our communities.

I have heard statements like sisyboy, mama’s boy, cheese boy, etc. These are used to describe men whom the community thinks they are not man enough or as manly as they want. These unfortunate souls are then clubbed into a box of ridicule and everyone talks derogatively about them. Even women see them as spineless. They too begin to think something is wrong with them and before they know it, they have fallen into a trap. We have a lot of such gender boxes.

Our culture can be very derogative and cruel. Just hear the language used to describe some people. You would think they are talking about animals and yet they are talking about human beings. Once someone dresses differently, they are cast away.

They are quick to be given names and then isolated. There are many people who can see a prostitute in your dressing. Some can see so many weaknesses and begin to label you. You wear a mini skirt, you are a prostitute. You wear a tight or skinny jean, you are a prostitute. You wear long shabby skirts, you are an old woman. You see, at the end of the day you do not know yourself. You do not know what society really wants. They look at your hair style and draw conclusions. They look at your make-up and draw conclusions. You see we have so many boxes. Unfortunately all our boxes are about condemnation.

I could go on and on about these boxes. We have political boxes these days. These too have become so divisive in our communities. We have crime boxes. The gangsters are put into their own. We have boxes for whatever thugs in our communities. Everyone is in a box of some sort. We have the poverty boxes where the innocent poor are buried.

My challenge beloved is that all these boxes are not for a good reason. They are boxes of ridicule. They are tools of rejection.

We club people together so that we can reject them and have nothing to do with them. At what stage will our communities love each other and begin to rehabilitate each other or their own people? I am not denying that these people we have clubbed might be having psychological, moral or whatever challenges and problems etc.

I am saying there is always a better way of helping them than throwing them away. Rejecting people does not solve their issues. We need to embrace them and help them to be like us. This is what I call the Jesus model of community living. Most of these “rejects” end up coming together to form gangs and terrorise the same community that rejects them. Can you blame them? They form their own “culture or gender roles” based on their brokenness and operate on a survival mode. They must fight for their identities. They become repulsive, emotional and violent. The reason is they feel condemned, rejected and not trusted.

It is amazing how much criminals, thugs and crazy people we have created out of our attitudes. Meanwhile we respond by arresting them and putting them in prisons and shutting them out completely. Our prison systems these days are places of vengeance and dump sites. We dump what we think is unsuitable for our communities. All these we do in the name of our own kind of justice. I thought that proper justice is about restoration of broken humans. It is not about casting them away so they can be broken beyond repair.

What am I saying today? Beloved, life is about loving and accepting each other with our faults. Life is about helping each other reform and transform. I am not saying criminals should not be sent to prison. NO. They must, but before they are criminals, what have we done as communities? What is our contribution to their criminal status? Most of them are victims of our cultures, political, economic, social, and religious and many others. Is it not wiser that we take time to investigate our socialisation of each other with the intention of bringing back into it the love of God and the word of God? Socialisation outside the word of God breeds an army for the devil. This is where we are right now. When we socialise each other based on the misconceptions of a fallen human nature or sin nature, we are going to produce fake men and women who will eat each other and embrace injustices as justice.

We need to rid ourselves of this culture of rejection and embrace a culture of loving and protecting our broken ones with the aim of rehabilitating them and helping them. Africa rejects herself too much and this is her biggest weakness. Well, Africa shall be saved.

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Kilton Moyo is creator of Fruitful Marriages, a renewal and enrichment programme and is a pastor, counsellor and author of The Sex Trap.

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