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SOUTH
AFRICA IS DISGRACING ITSELF AND ITS FRIENDS
By Cameron Duodo
March 01, 2017
A metaphor
used to describe disappointment portrays the
act whereby one's teeth miss something one
wanted to chew and bite into each other
instead.
Depending on the amount of
energy put into the act of chewing, this can
result in a very painful “tooth-self-bite or
one tooth unintentionally biting another
tooth.(!) The pain results as much from
sheer shock act as the act of biting itself.
The Twi expression for this unusual pain
caused consists of just two words – “mese
afem”. Although few in number, they're
heavily loaded words. For in addition to the
literal meaning of biting one's own teeth,
they have a figurative meaning. They convey
this idea: “I'd hoped for to encounter
something palatable when I began this
process, but instead, I've been jolted by an
unexpected pain, akin to tooth-ache – and
you know what that's like!”
Frankly,
that's just how I feel whenever I hear that
mobs in South Africa have attacked and
killed or injured people from other African
countries and vandalised their shops and
homes.
For some of us have always
idealised the situation in South Africa.
First, we looked upon it as a land in which
people of different colours were contesting
for power. Whites were largely against, and
victimised, “Blacks” and “Coloureds”. The
other races,in their turn, hated the "baaskap"
Whites.
Thankfully, in 1989, the
situation in South Africa began to unravel.
The white minority was persuaded by a man
called F. W de Klerk to give up political
power. But de Klerk was very clever in
arranging the transfer of power. He made
sure that the white minority would continue
to retain the economic power which it had
used political power to capture, since the
election to power of the National Party
[Boers] in 1948.
In celebrating the
achievement of what was, essentially, only
“half-power”, we were wrong. For, we were
being trapped into thinking in terms of
groups. The Blacks had such an advantage in
numbers that we assumed they would use
political power to wrest economic power from
the hands of the whites. It didn't work like
that, for, of course, there are Blacks who
are capitalist-minded as the selfish Whites.
So,White economic power identified,wooed
and allied itself to some of the more
corruptible elements in the Black majority.
People were offered board membership in
white-owned companies, with all the
privileges ancillary to membership of the
business oligarchy. In turn, business power
infiltrated natioal and regional politics.
Through what was called “Black economic
empowerment”, business was given a
legitimate means to break the claws of the
political power exercised by the Black
majority.
For instance, the leader of
the National Union of Mineworkers, the
once-militant trade unionist, Mr Cyril
Ramaphosa, was enticed away from his
championship of the rights of the
poorly-paid Black miners, onto the board of
Lonrho, one of the most notorious
beneficiaries of apartheid-style wage
differentiation between white and Black
miners. When trouble broke out at Marikana,
a mine owned by Lonrho, it was [the now]
“Big Boss”Ramaphosa who was sent out to
defuse it. His reputation took a severe
knock from that terrible crisis (it resulted
in a great loss of life) that may well put
paid to his ambition to replace President
Jacob Zuma as President, at the head of the
African National Congress (ANC) when the
next general election is held in 2019.
Yes, it is not always sensible to assume
that the populace of countries are
necessarily made up of “lumpen” groups when
it comes to politics. Individuals often act
to achieve their own selfish ends and are
impelled to action by their own impulses,
even within the most solid-looking
organisations. And that's why I counsel
myself not to jump to too many conclusions
when I read things like the following:
QUOTE:
"South African police have
used stun grenades, rubber bullets and water
cannon to try to disperse anti-immigration
protesters in the capital, Pretoria, and
keep them from foreign nationals who had
gathered to express alarm about recent
attacks.
"Resentment against foreign
nationals has sometimes turned deadly amid
accusations that they take jobs from locals
in a country where unemployment is more than
25%.....
"In 2015, anti-immigrant
riots in and around the city of Durban left
at least six people dead. About 60 people
were killed in similar violence seven years
earlier. [In the latest outbreak of
violence]… Protesters in Pretoria marched
towards the foreign ministry, some carrying
sticks or pipes. A petition was handed to
the ministry in which they suggested the
government teach immigrants to “speak
properly”. The petition added: “They are
arrogant and they don’t know how to talk to
people, especially [the] Nigerians.”
"The Nelson Mandela Foundation criticised
[the South African] authorities for “giving
permission for a march of hatred”.
"A
statement issued by President Jacob Zuma’s
office said South Africans should not blame
all crime on foreign nationals. It cited
recent reports of violence in Pretoria and
hate speech on social media. “Many citizens
of other countries living in South Africa
are law abiding and contribute to the
economy of the country positively,” Zuma
said. “It is wrong to brandish all
non-nationals as drug dealers or human
traffickers.”
"[But] Amnesty
International accused the [South African]
authorities of failing to “address toxic
populist rhetoric that blames and scapegoats
refugees and migrants”.
"Zuma
[claimed that] South Africans were not
xenophobic, and he called on everyone,
citizens and non-citizens [alike], to work
together to combat the high crime rate.
"The periodic backlash against foreign
nationals has hurt the tolerant image the
country has tried to present since the end
of apartheid almost a quarter of a century
ago."
. UNQUOTE ( London Guardian)
The questions I ask are: Who organised
the attacks? Are the mobs on a crusade
against drugs and alleged prostitution
whipped up by religious fanatics? Or are
they being used by politicians who have
become unpopular due to their lack of
performance, to distract attention from such
problems as massive unemployment and lack of
housing in the townships, and focus
attention on “immigrants” instead?
Whatever the cause(s) of the attacks, the
duty of the South African Government is
clear: please take the trouble to educate
your citizens well about other African
countries.
For years, the Ghana Government, under
our late President, Dr Kwame Nkrumah, housed
and fed hundreds of South African refugees
in flats and hostels at what is now the
Airport Residential Area in Accra. One of my
friends, Edwin Duplan, was at one time the
director of the establishment that looked
after the refugees. Meanwhile, Nkrumah's
Bureau of African Affairs provided political
and military training to those South
Africans who applied for such training. They
lacked for nothing.
Nigeria also did
its bit. At one stage, Mr Thabo Mbeki, who
was to become President of South Africa
after the retirement of Nelson Mandela, was
a guest in Nigeria. (See his speech on
Xenophobia at http://www.pressreader.com/south-africa/cape-times/20170228/281706909460349
Once, whilst I was visiting Nigeria,
I was surprised to be invited to a meeting
of the Nigeria Anti-Apartheid Committee that
was organised by my friend Sam Ikoku (a
former Nigerian exile in Ghana). Sam Ikoku
announced at the meeting that Nigeria's
[then] richest man, Chief M K O Abiola, had
donated the equivalent of $1 million to the
cause of looking after South African exiles
in Nigeria.
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I have
seen Mozambicans and Angolans too doing
their best for South Africans, even when
they themselves were indigent. Ditto for
Zimbabweans. I have also personally visited
South African exile camps in Zambia. (One of
these was full of recruits brought into
Zambia by a rather dodgy freedom fighters
organisation called the Unity Movement of
South Africa (UMSA), led by a man called I.B
Tabata. The Zambians did their best to
assist them, though they knew that not all
of them were serious freedom fighters.
Does the ANC leadership, many of whose
members lived in exile in other African
countries for many years, bother to tell
their stories to the new generation that is
growing up in South African and who know
almost nothing about the role played in the
struggle against apartheid by the poor
African countries whose people constitute
the “immigrants” they now despise and harass
periodically?
Does the South African
Department of Home Affairs explain to the
people of South Africa how stringent are the
conditions that people from other African
countries are already made to fulfill before
they are granted visas to enter South Africa
and to remain resident there?
No –
South Africans mustn't do this to Africa.
There is a saying in Ghana that “If you
won't praise me, at least do not defame me!"
Classifying African “immigrants” as drug
dealers and organisers of prostitution is a
wicked ploy. If there are criminals, they
should be reported to the police and dealt
with as any other criminals. Venting the
anger and frustration that incompetent, or
corrupt, or mediocre politicians have
aroused, upon hapless “immigrants”, is a
manifestation of hatred and xenophobia pure
and simple.
And it doesn't befit the
image of the South Africa many of us thought
we were helping to create.
By Cameron Duodo
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