Dale T. McKinley

The sun has almost set on the soccer World Cup and its seeming suspension of our South African 'normalcy'.

Back in the bad old days of apartheid, things seemed to be a lot clearer when it came to God and politics.

Until a few years ago South Africa's social conservatism was one of our best-kept ‘secrets’.

Just over a month ago the legendary Dennis Brutus passed away.

Even if the meanings we give to measurements of time are most often overblown, there is something about the mark of a new decade. In the case of South Africa, 1990 marked the beginning of the end of the apartheid system, ushering in a period pregnant with new hopes, possibilities and dreams.

While the violent intensity and geographical spread of the recent attacks on immigrants that took place across South Africa certainly surprised most of us, we should not have been surprised either that such attacks happened or at the state’s response to the attacks, given the political and socio-