We’re all just human beings fighting the same battles

Vladimir Putin has my vote. Yes, spurt that morning coffee right out of your nose. I’m no Commie, but hell, the man is right when he talks of “Western stupidity”.

Delivering a state of the nation address, Putin described the West’s madness simply as: “The Anglican Church is considering a gender-neutral God.

“May God forgive them for they know not what they do.”

Ah, you, like me, missed that part. The Church of England earlier this month announced it was considering alternatives to referring to God as “he” after priests asked to be allowed to use gender-neutral terms instead.

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As one British paper said: “It is currently unclear what would replace the term Our Father in the Lord’s Prayer, the central Christian prayer which Jesus Christ instructed his followers to say.”

Listen to one reverend, Dr Ian Paul, who said any change would represent an abandonment of the Church’s own doctrine: “The fact that God is called ‘Father’ can’t be substituted by ‘Mother’ without changing meaning, nor can it be gender-neutralised to ‘Parent’.”

So, I back Putin: Reverend Paul will be out in the cold – and the West is, really, just stupid. Like us.

We never listened to the late Arch when he introduced that simple word Ubuntu into our South African vernacular.

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I know you’re thinking Rainbow Nation, but Tutu’s Ubuntu “theology” made it into the epilogue of the interim constitution of SA in 1993: “There is a need for understanding but not for vengeance, a need for reparation but not for retaliation, a need for Ubuntu but not for victimisation.”

But we, years later, still can’t find each other. We argue about who’s a true African – all borne of this soil? Our divide is still big. Our lack of acceptance even bigger.

I watched two men fighting over a parking spot this week, hurling insults … and as they pull off, black and white middle fingers were flying through the air. And I wanted to tell them: let’s not join the wild, wild West arguing about Father and Mother.

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Because, like Tutu, we need to see we’re all just human beings fighting the same battles. Ubuntu. “I am because we are.” We’re brothers.