DEAR Editor,-
I am a veiled Muslim woman. Just like any other morning, on April 13, I was doing my school rounds in Port Shepstone. Waiting patiently behind a double-parked car on Connor Street (in the left lane opposite Port Shepstone Junior Primary), the driver of which had exited to assist her child across the road safely, a man in a silver Ford Ranger stopped on my right and started gesticulating to me.
I rolled down my window and tried gesturing that I was merely waiting for the vehicle in front of me to move off and that I wasn’t intentionally holding up traffic. I was told by the man to ‘go back to where you came from’ before he drove off.
My two children were in the car and witnessed the ugly ordeal. Children, being children, they wanted to know why the man was so rude and asked me “Where must you go back to, mummy?” A question I would like to pose to the man, because I was born and raised in South Africa – and so were my parents and grandparents.
There’s traffic congestion and chaos everywhere. To the coward who chose to pick on a lone Muslim woman with two children in the car: Learn to be patient, tolerant and polite. It’s because of people like you that road rage exists.
PROUDLY SOUTH AFRICAN MUSLIM
Port Shepstone
