Our brothers have gone mad again!

Tyres are set alight. Rocks become weapons. People are hacked, stabbed, shot and burned to death. Jubilant mobs hound Somalis, Mozambicans, Zimbabweans, Pakistanis and Bangladeshis from their homes and businesses.”In sheer savagery, the Zulus of South Africa are no different from Boko Haram. Their king, a throwback to primitive centuries of yore, voiced their unscientific […]

Tyres are set alight. Rocks become weapons. People are hacked, stabbed, shot and burned to death. Jubilant mobs hound Somalis, Mozambicans, Zimbabweans, Pakistanis and Bangladeshis from their homes and businesses.”
In sheer savagery, the Zulus of South Africa are no different from Boko Haram. Their king, a throwback to primitive centuries of yore, voiced their unscientific assumption – that immigrants from other African countries deprive the natives of jobs, houses and women. A claim which studies have shown to be false.
Research findings released last year showed that 82% of the working population aged between 15 and 64 were “non-migrants”, 14% were “domestic migrants” who had moved between provinces in the past five years and just 4% could be classed as “international migrants”. With an official working population of 33,017,579 people, this means that around 1.2-million of them were international migrants. A racial breakdown of the statistics reveals that 79% of international migrants were African, 17% were white and around three percent were Indian or Asian. A good many of them were employers of labour or self-employed.
But they hold on to the false belief that foreigners are taking their jobs nonetheless. They call foreigners makwerekwere, that is, scavengers. The spate of violence in Gauteng swept through parts of Soweto, Kagiso, Alexandra and Langlaagte, claiming the lives of six people, including a one-month old child.
The tragic irony of this Zulu variant of black on black violence is that only a few decades ago, these same people sought refuge in those African countries whose citizens they are burning alive and butchering today. In the 70’s we had many South African students in Nigerian universities, courtesy of the Nigerian government. Our government gave them generous bursary awards to the extent that they were generally more prosperous than their Nigerian counterparts. That empowered them to hit the bottle really hard. We treated them as valued brothers and sisters because we knew that everyone was a foreigner somewhere. I have once recounted on these pages how, as student leaders, we trooped to the ANC office manned by Thabo Mbeki in Obalende, Lagos, to collect anti-apartheid posters and other literature for distribution round tertiary institutions.
Who could ever have imagined that those beneficiaries of our hospitality and large-heartedness would one day turn round to lynch our children in their ‘liberated’ land? Something snapped in me when I saw clip after clip of the South African horror. I told myself that if I could do anything about it, I would. So I petitioned the International Criminal Court at The Hague as follows:    
I write to draw the attention of the International Criminal Court to the widespread killing of black foreigners in Durban, Johannesburg and some other parts of South Africa. The horrific public lynching of fellow blacks by South African blacks was instigated by the king of the Zulu people, Goodwill Zwelithini, who, in March, delivered a speech that many construed as being derisive of foreign residents. President Zuma’s son later publicly supported and added to the king’s sentiments, adding fuel to the fire. Among the king’s reported remarks: “We ask foreign nationals to pack their belongings and go back to their countries.” Although the king claims his words were poorly translated from isiZulu and that he was misinterpreted, it is clear that he is only trying to exculpate himself after the global outrage that greeted the barbaric slaughter on the streets of South Africa. Some of the victims were clubbed to death; some cut to pieces with machetes; some burnt alive; some others dispatched with a cocktail of horrendous acts of depraved cruelty. The social media is rife with the gory details. If those criminals get away with this crime against humanity, then the whole world must brace up for more horrific days ahead.
For the sake of our shared humanity, I call on the International Criminal Court to please bring the South African criminals to book. I am a Nigerian journalist and PR practitioner. No one on the surface of the earth deserves the gruesome end the victims of the South African violence against black foreigners met.
A Zambian, Mighti Jamie, was so horrified he decided to write a letter to the nation called South Africa through the Lusaka Times. I thought the letter deserved as wide an exposure as possible because of its poignancy:
Dear South Africa,
This is not Xenophobia, this is Afrophobia.
You bring down statues of hate and yet you build the biggest statue of all. To kill the very people who helped liberate you. You have made this soil a monument of hatred for your brother.
We trained Mandela, we funded and armed uMkhonto we Sizwe. Chief Albert Luthuli was born in what is now Zimbabwe.
The Greek lives safely in this country
The Asian lives safely in this country
The American lives safely in this country
The English
The Dutch
The Jewish
The Indian lives safely in this country
Yet the brother who shares your story, the very sisters who share your bloodline . This is who you burn on the streets, axe and slaughter . You are divided against yourselves and that has always been the bedrock of failure. The brothers and sisters who bled by your side, the blood that helped liberate this great nation . You thank their seeds with fire and unforgiving blades.
Rhodes has not fallen … colonialism never died, it flows in our blood. When kings call for the killing of cousins, Rhodes has not fallen. We are Rhodes.
Top physician and compulsive adventurer, Dr John Mabayoje, reviewed the situation as follows:
“For me, after interacting with the brothers in RSA and Zimbabwe and seeing their treachery to their bosses – that eventually led to the business establishment being taken over, stripped of valuables and they end up being left destitute and jobless… But they have the satisfaction of doing their Muzungu boss in. How do you advise or help such people?”
The reaction of the Nigerian government to the South African madness has been characteristically tepid. If it isn’t asking for too much, can our government at least send a couple of planes to South Africa to help evacuate our nationals who want to return home?