The Stranger in My Mirror

The Stranger in My Mirror

When I was a child, my grandmother used to say, "The border is something people draw on maps. Hunger, hope, and grief don't stop to check passports."

I nodded whenever she said it, but I never truly understood.

Years later, I found myself standing outside a small grocery shop in Johannesburg, watching a crowd shout at a man with a Zimbabwean accent. They called him names. They told him to go home. Some threw stones.

I stood there and did nothing.

In my mind, I justified it. They're taking jobs. They're making life harder. They don't belong here.

I was Black. I was African. Yet somehow, I believed another Black African was less deserving than I was because he had crossed a border.

A week later, load shedding hit our neighborhood. The only shop still open was the same Zimbabwean man's store. I went in because I needed bread.

He greeted me with a smile.

"How are you, brother?"

Brother.

Not stranger. Not South African. Not customer.

Brother.

As he packed my groceries, I noticed a photograph behind the counter. It showed his wife and two daughters.

"They're still in Harare," he said when he saw me looking. "I'm working here so they can finish school."

His story sounded familiar.

My father had left our rural village years before I was born to find work in the city. He, too, had been called names. He, too, had been told he didn't belong—only then, it was because he came from a different province.

The difference between my father and this man was not struggle.

It was a line on a map.

That realization unsettled me.

I began noticing how often I blamed foreigners for problems that had existed long before they arrived. Unemployment. Crime. Poverty. Corruption. They were easier to blame than confronting the deeper issues that affected all of us.

That did not mean every migrant was perfect, just as not every South African was. Good and bad people existed on both sides of every border.

Months later, another protest erupted. Angry voices filled the streets again.

This time, I walked toward the shop instead of away from it.

Together with a few neighbors, we helped close the shutters and kept watch until the crowd dispersed.

Afterward, the shopkeeper handed me a bottle of water.

"I knew you would come," he said.

I looked at him, embarrassed by who I had once been.

"I almost didn't."

He smiled.

"Sometimes people change."

Walking home, I thought about my grandmother's words. Borders may define countries, but they cannot measure humanity.

Being Black and African had never guaranteed solidarity. Fear, hardship, and misinformation could make us suspicious even of those who looked like us and shared our history. But identity alone did not determine our choices.

Compassion did.

That day, I realized the stranger I needed to confront had never been the man from another country.

It had been the prejudice inside me.