Xenophobia resurgent & paradox of survival in South Africa

The livid rage by some of the victimised Africans depict the outrage that nations feel about these attacks, coming from South African blacks against fellow blacks who are either from neighbouring countries such as Angola, Mozambique, Zimbabwe or geographically distant ‘neighbours’ like Nigeria – all of who shared in the struggle to end the heinous […]

The livid rage by some of the victimised Africans depict the outrage that nations feel about these attacks, coming from South African blacks against fellow blacks who are either from neighbouring countries such as Angola, Mozambique, Zimbabwe or geographically distant ‘neighbours’ like Nigeria – all of who shared in the struggle to end the heinous regime called apartheid which crippled the freedom and humanity of South Africa for many decades. Calls for one form of retaliation or/and reprisals or the other have ranged from the very extreme to the moderate or mild but there is an unequivocal demand for some sustained action against the violence unleashed by South African blacks on other Africans living/subtending in their country on account of the allegation that these immigrants have taken away from them the jobs meant for them, thus rendering them jobless. A case of what my former student and friend, Dr. OlatundeAyodabo, has christened, ‘the paradox of survival.’ Youths of South Africa, in their blind quest to retrieve what they term their seized labour, attack those who help create their very freedom, from the scratch!
 Let me begin on the conceptual level. Many have argued that, strictly speaking, what is happening is not xenophobia – antipathy against foreigners. I beg to disagree. The South Africans who are causing this mayhem consider their black fellows from other African nations as foreigners – not as fellow Africans. They have let be the white bourgeois elite who are controlling the commanding heights of the nation’s economy – those who run the industries, the mines, the hotels, the malls, and other institutions where the black majority serve either as gate-keepers, stewards, hands and other positions of no capital consequence – minders of menial duties. Instead, they are killing and attacking Africans like Nigerians who are engaged in the informal sectors of the economy – people who are disbursing their skills, talents and funds to run businesses which help grow the economy of the country. These South African youths unleashed their venom, not on those white and a few black bourgeois elite who occupy the top positions in the civil and public services, as well as in the private sectors. They are routing and displacing other Africans and treating them purely and squarely as foreign elements parasitising on their sources of livelihood and who must go back to their own countries. Nothing can be more xenophobic than that.
Let us not play any game of elision with the reality. Those of us who think that, based on the critical and positive roles that many of these nations played as  frontline states at the peak of the struggle against apartheid – including and especially Nigeria, which since the early sixties have made Africa the centre-piece of her foreign policy on account of her vision to participate effectively and inimitably in the liberation struggle in the entire Sothern Africa—in Angola, Mozambique, Zimbabwe and most significantly in South Africa, are valued neighbours have been proved naive and wrong-headed. This is where the perception of the real essence of the xenophobic attacks, yet again, on Africans leaving in South Africa must commence.
Why do the attacking South African youths vent their vengeful rage on ‘fellow’ Africans? What is their understanding of the nature of the relationship that should exist between South Africa and their neighbours as well as other Africans?  With specific reference to Nigeria, what kind of national perception and understanding of the vitality of Nigeria’s input to South Africa at the most crucial moments of their struggle for freedom from the inhuman, white supremacist, racist apartheid government subtend? First of all, I put the blame of the ignorance of the contribution of Nigeria to South Africa on the complete absence of national memory of the average South African based on the failure of the governments in South Africa to educate and bring to national consciousness the role of Nigeria in the eventual liberation of the country. Between 1994 and today, all children born into South Africa are oblivious of those who made it possible for their independence to happen. Besides Nelson Madiba Mandela, most governments have made Nigeria appear as a rival nation in terms of economic stature and leadership struggle in Africa. The place of Nigeria as a historical benefactor; as a nation which made un-quantifiable contribution to the very essence of their freedom; has been down-played, perennially, by succeeding governments in South Africa. No government in South Africa has implanted in the national memory or recorded in the history books of the nation the frontline role that Nigeria played – politically, economically and culturally- in the liberation of South Africa from the strangle-hold of the criminal apartheid regime. South Africans of 30 years and below, who form the critical mass in the xenophobic attack have no education of the contribution of the Nigerian governments from as far as back as Prime Minister TafawaBalewa, to Yakubu Gowon, and more indomitably, Murtala Mohammed and OlusegunObasanjo who took firm and determined steps to focus their foreign policy on Africa and specifically on the liberation of South Africa. No nation played a more significant role in the liberation of South Africa in economic and political terms than Nigeria and no nation has been more abused in return by South Africans than Nigeria, alas!
South Africans are not aware of this and have, on a permanent basis, responded to perceived and treated Nigeria and Nigerians with loathsomeness, utter contempt and crass ingratitude. On the cultural front, leading Nigerian cultural activists – from Wole Soyinka through Sunny Okosun to MajekFashek—mobilised the consciousness of the world through their creative works towards the urgency of terminating apartheid. Wole Soyinka, apart from his literary works, his pointedly political book of poetry titled ‘Mandela’s Earth,’ devoted his Nobel Prize’s Acceptance Speech of 1986 to the dehumanisation of the African personality and the entire humanity by the very existence of apartheid.

To be continued.