The recent assassination of Charlie Kirk has once again exposed the deep fractures across racial lines in South Africa. Social media timelines, WhatsApp groups, and community conversations are abuzz with anger, suspicion, and old wounds. It feels like history is never far behind us—sometimes weaponised, sometimes romanticised, but always present.
In moments like these, I find myself thinking about my own people, the Mfengu. Our history is often tucked away in the margins of history and school textbooks. Yet it has something to say to us today.
History: A Complicated Story
Some want to tell African history as if it were harmony and hugs until Europeans arrived. But we know that’s not true. The Mfecane was not a community outreach program. Shaka’s wars scattered and slaughtered the Mfengu people, driving many into exile. Others prefer to tell the story as though the Mfengu simply ran into the warm embrace of the Xhosa. Only, that’s not entirely true either. Yes, the Xhosa gave refuge. But it was refuge at the margins: poor land, low status, suspicion, and often exploitation.
The human story is one of sinners wounding one another…sinners on every side, black and white.
And long before Europeans began the transatlantic slave trade, Africans were already selling other Africans into slavery. Rival chiefs and kingdoms raided neighbouring villages, taking captives as spoils of war or selling them along trade routes that stretched north into the Arab world. In other words, the slave trade was not a European invention, even if Europeans expanded it with devastating effect.
And then, of course, there were the white colonists. The dispossession of African land, the frontier wars, the massacres, the forced removals, the pass laws, the creation of a system that deliberately stripped Africans of dignity and opportunity. The Mfengu themselves were often used as pawns—caught between alliances with the British and the suspicion of their fellow Africans. Here too, the story is messy.
So the Bible reminds us that « all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God » (Romans 3:23). History confirms what the Bible already tells us: no group is innocent; no people are without guilt. The human story—in Africa, in Europe, everywhere—is one of sinners wounding one another.
The Mfengu Refusal of Bitterness
And here is what strikes me: our ancestors didn’t hand down bitterness as an inheritance. Despite being scattered by the Zulus, exploited by the Xhosa, and manipulated by white colonists, they didn’t raise their children to despise those who wronged them. Instead, they adapted, they identified with others, they built communities, they even came to call themselves Xhosa.
The Mfengu didn’t raise their children to despise those who wronged them.
That resilience is worth pondering. In my own 38 years, I’ve yet to meet a Mfengu who wasted his breath hating the Zulus or the Xhosa. I have, however, met plenty of black people—including some among the Mfengu—who can’t stop hating the white man. Strange, isn’t it? It’s almost as if it’s easier to edit the story than face the whole messy truth: sinners on every side, black and white alike.
The writer of Hebrews warns us: « See to it…that no ‘root of bitterness’ springs up and causes trouble, and by it many become defiled » (Hebrews 12:15). Bitterness poisons not only the one who holds it, but whole communities. The Mfengu story quietly shows us another way: it is possible to survive injustice without letting hatred write the last chapter.
What This Teaches Us
So what do we learn here? That history is complicated. That every group carries wounds and guilt. That bitterness is always an option—but not the only one. Perhaps that’s the gift the Mfengu can offer us in this moment: the courage to face history in its fullness, without rewriting it into myths of innocence or tales of permanent victimhood. We don’t need to pretend the past was harmony. We also don’t need to let the pain of the past dictate the hatreds of the present.
I’m not saying we should simply « forgive and forget. » Justice matters. Truth matters. The atrocities of the Mfecane, the exploitation by the Xhosa, Africans selling other Africans into slavery, and the violence and systemic oppression by white colonists all matter. The Bible tells us: « He has told you, O man, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God? » (Micah 6:8). Truth-telling and justice are part of what God requires.
Alongside justice, the gospel calls us to forgiveness and reconciliation.
But alongside justice, the gospel calls us to forgiveness and reconciliation. « If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come. All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation » (2 Corinthians 5:17–18).
When I look at the Mfengu story, I see people who survived trauma without turning survival into a cycle of hatred. They remembered where they came from, but they refused to poison their children with bitterness. Could that be part of the path we need now?
We Can Leave a Different Legacy
The assassination of Charlie Kirk will pass from the headlines. But the fractures it revealed will remain, because they were there all along. Our challenge isn’t merely to condemn or defend; it is to ask: what kind of inheritance are we handing down? Will our children inherit our wounds, or our wisdom? Will they receive bitterness, or a vision of hope?
The Mfengu story whispers to us: it is possible to suffer injustice without letting hatred write the last chapter.
And maybe, just maybe, that is where the gospel speaks most clearly too. At the cross we see the most unjust act in history—yet it didn’t produce vengeance, but salvation. Jesus prayed for his executioners, « Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do » (Luke 23:34). And in his resurrection, Jesus opened the door to a new humanity, where Jew and Gentile, black and white, Zulu, Xhosa and Mfengu, can be reconciled in him (Ephesians 2:14-16; Galatians 3:28). This is our hope. This is the inheritance we must pass down.
