By Kevin Govender
Each morning, I inhaled deeply, tasting a trace of iodine in the wind, the scented bile of dried seaweed wafting from the beach. I watched the waves pounding the frothy shore, burbling and hissing and sucking at the black rocks as they retreated.
The morning sun glistened in the cerulean sky as seagulls rode the salty breeze. At night, the waves played a soothing lullaby to my tired soul. The best years of my life (1993 to 2008) were spent at the town of Isipingo Beach where I resided in a flat overlooking the ocean. I had a host of friends including many Muslim brothers. It was a place where I re-discovered love that was the raison d'être (reason for being) for me to carry on living my dreams.
My memories are being shattered and I am troubled by the resident who won a court ruling calling for an end to the Muslim call to prayer. Does the individual have the sine qua non to put such a sensitive case before the judiciary? I know he has the constitutional right to do so.
For decades, various religions have lived in harmony in Isipingo Beach. We, Christians, to my knowledge, were not stopped from building our churches. Hindus and blacks for years have conducted sacrificial prayers on the beach.
Zionists have conducted baptisms in the holy waters. Hindus disperse ashes of their cremated loved ones in the sea. Yearly, hundreds of Hindu worshippers who come to the Easter Festival in Isipingo Rail, flock to Isipingo Beach.
To my knowledge, there has been no unreasonable objection from Muslims to the freedom of religious practices. Where does this mad man, who is attacking and mocking another religion, rise from? I saw this old man on TV and he strikes me as an out-of-whack personality and prone to whiny, recursive, navel-gazing - a crackpot with a vituperative attitude and with nothing better to pursue. He should walk to the shoreline. The sea breeze will clear his polluted thoughts.
Isipingo Beach has a close-knit community and an act of proprietary like this will have even the mud crabs from the mangroves listening in. I feel compelled to join my Muslim brothers in their appeal against the ruling.
* The views expressed here are not necessarily those of Independent Media.
The Star