His passion however was mathematics, which he started teaching via a makeshift blackboard in the parking lot, until finally a school appointed him to teach formally.

We are as a country richer for having him here, and his story illustrates the danger of xenophobia.

You see it isn't the criminal that normally gets attacked by xenophobes, the cowards who loot shops are afraid of the serious criminals; it is the people like Fernando, who set up doing what they are passionate about and strive to improve the place they live.

The history of empires is a strange one, with the basic strength of many of them being their ability to include people fleeing bad circumstances, and use their skills and knowledge. This is how Rome, which started off as a backwater one got banished to, ended up being the most powerful and prosperous nation in the world in its age.

What this sort of immigration means, if it is dealt with in a manner we can cope with, is an influx of unusual and varied skills. There is a continent worth of people who know things we do not, who have experiences we do not share, who can enrich us as a country if we plan for them instead of trying to plan ways to minimise their existence.

That is what defined America, before half its major political parties got taken over by knowledge-phobic morons who seem to think corporations are more deserving of personhood than people from other countries.

The acceptance of people with different backgrounds can give a country an edge in improving its scientific standing, in boosting our ability to produce. We have skills shortages, and we have refugees with the skills we need to sort that out, we simply need a government with a plan for using them.

We can turn our immigration problem into an asset, which we can turn towards a national goal. That is the thing we really lack in this country, a national goal, a definition not of where South Africa is, but where we want it to be.

For too long we have heard the rhetoric of more jobs – more jobs doing what exactly? For too long we have spoken about some vague conception of the economy – an economy selling what exactly?

We educate our students with no real view as to what we need in terms of labour, producing far more humanities graduates even as our employers scream for scientists and engineers, because we don’t really know what we want to be.

With immigrants like Mr Ogadi, we can achieve whatever we set our minds to. We just need to set our minds to something. Personally I think we should go for science, because while we like much of Africa are going to have to start from virtually rock bottom – rock is a pretty good foundation.

Let’s stop asking the world to do things for us, let’s start doing things for the world.