Wednesday, September 18, 2019 / 06:55AM / OpEd By
Reuben Abati / Header Image Credit: State House
We
are told that South Africa's President Cyril Ramaphosa apologised on Saturday
for the xenophobic attacks against foreigners living in South Africa,
particularly persons involved in business who are seen by the ordinary South
African as enemies. He reportedly did this in Harare, Zimbabwe, at the funeral
ceremony of former President Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe. Most appropriately, the
South African President was booed. He was offering too little too late, and
other Africans have every reason to think that South Africans having behaved
badly deserve to be booed and even shut out of the African Union, or reported
to the International Criminal Court (ICC), as has been recommended in certain
quarters. More than a week after the attack on foreigners on the streets of
Johannesburg and elsewhere, it has now occurred to the South African President
to send envoys to Nigeria and six other African countries. Jeff Radebe, South
Africa's Minister of Energy has visited Abuja to apologise to the government
and people of Nigeria.
It
may be in keeping with diplomatic traditions to do this, but Africans in unison
must make it clear that the hate-driven attack on immigrants in South Africa is
totally unacceptable. What we know is that there is a tacit acceptance and
promotion of a culture of hate by the South African authorities. That is
precisely why it took so long for the South African President to take the
matter seriously. Before now, South African Minister of Foreign Affairs Grace
Naledi Pandor told the world that Nigerians in South Africa are criminals, drug
dealers and human traffickers. Deputy Police Minister Bongani Mkongi said no
other country would tolerate 80% of its businesses being dominated by
foreigners as is the case in South Africa. South African Defence Minister
Nosiviwe Mapisa-Nqakula boasted, irresponsibly, that there is nothing South
Africa can do about the xenophobic attacks because South Africa is an angry
nation.
These
were the disturbing messages that came out of South Africa as immigrants were
attacked, their shops were pillaged and plundered and Africans from other parts
of the continent fled in all directions. Rwanda, Nigeria, Zambia, Madagascar,
Democratic Republic of Congo - government and nationals - expressed their anger
in various forms but South Africa was studiously in denial. The only voices of
reason in the midst of that crisis, as far as I could see, were Julius Malema
of the Economic Freedom Fighters who condemned the deplorable conduct of South
Africans; Mangozuthu Buthelezi, the Zulu Chief who gave a useful speech in
which he reminded his compatriots of the sacrifice made by other Africans to
free the black South African from apartheid. Then, of course, there is the
testimony by many South African women, on social media - bold women who rose in
defence of Nigerian men, who have been accused in this xenophobic crisis that
they are taking over South African businesses and also marrying South African
women to the discomfiture of the average South African
male.
Xenophobic
attacks in South Africa have been so regular and so persistent since 1994,
after apartheid. Objection to white rule and domination has been replaced by
resistance to the presence of immigrants on South African soil, and this has
played out as black on black violence, the hegemony of hate and intolerance, a
kind of reverse, umbilical apartheid with the immigrant as victim. The matter
is serious. It is disturbing. It is unacceptable. President Cyril Ramaphosa's
apology does not solve the problem. His decision to send envoys across Africa
is belated. Is he sincere? I don't think so. Has he shown required leadership
and sincerity of purpose. No. The South African authorities have a
responsibility to protect foreigners on their soil. They have failed woefully.
Accusations of xenophobia may be difficult to accept, and indeed embarrassing,
and hence all that talk about criminality coming from South African officials,
but the truth is that South Africa must see this crisis as an opportunity for
reflection, review and penitence, and to ensure that these xenophobic attacks
do not happen again.
President
Ramaphosa's apology can only make sense if he goes further to take concrete
steps to put an end to the growing culture of hate in South Africa. He must match
his apology with action. What programme(s) does he intend to put in place to
heal a South African nation whose people appear so alienated, confused and
disturbed? Are there any concrete ideas on the table to address an issue that
goes straight to the heart of South Africa's relevance, and may be Ramaphosa's
eventual legacy? I doubt if there are any. It seems to me that the big problem
is not necessarily the outsider but the failure of the post-apartheid African
National Congress (ANC) leadership in South Africa and the emergent black
middle class. The apartheid regime was constructed to dehumanise,
de-personalize, and violate the black South African. The end of apartheid
in 1994 has not made much difference. The emergence in power of a black-dominated
African National Congress, the ruling party, after apartheid may have given the
impression of a power shift, but in real terms, the black South African has not
yet seen the dividends of a post-apartheid South Africa. In the last general
elections, the African National Congress (ANC) recorded its worst performance
since 1994. The party is divided. It is led by corrupt people who cannot agree
on ethical standards either within the party or outside of it. Unemployment
rate is over 28%. The people who have benefitted from the end of apartheid
represent a very small percentage of the black population. Many black and
colored South Africans live under conditions worse than what they faced under
apartheid. Nelson Mandela, the first post-apartheid President of South Africa
was a universal icon who gave everyone hope. He talked about a rainbow nation
and preached unity and reconciliation. Years after Mandela's death, the average
South African can no longer see the rainbow clearly. Most of the young people
wielding pangas and sticks and burning down shops belonging to foreigners do
not have a sense of history. Many of them were born after the Mandela era.
Their hate is borne out of sheer ignorance. Those who know the history have
refused to teach them. They just do not know that once upon a time in that same
South Africa, a black man was the equivalent of nothing.
The
first task before Cyril Ramaphosa is to build a truly rainbow nation on a
foundation of unity, reason, justice and service delivery. He needs to do this
because the inheritors of Mandela's legacy are clearly running South Africa
aground and giving a bad name to the black man in Africa. This is the original
source of the bad conduct of those South Africans who are killing their fellow
Africans. They are busy blaming outsiders for the problems that have been
created by their own leaders who don't even have the decency to say the right
things and who utter nonsense habitually. They have more or less disappointed
the Madiba, with perhaps the only exception of Thabo Mbeki, whose
Pan-Africanism contrasts sharply with the insularity and clownishness that we
have witnessed from Jacob Zuma to Ramaphosa.
South
African blacks are complaining that foreigners are taking their jobs and women
because post-apartheid, no sustainable, productive effort has been made to
enlarge the black middle class in South Africa. Social mobility remains a
problem. Educational standards for blacks have not improved significantly. The
few who have crossed the social mobility line are selfish. They have imposed on
their own kinsmen such terror and wickedness worse than that of the white
architects of apartheid. Those young South Africans venting their anger
on Africans and other immigrants in their country are nonethe4less picking on
the wrong target. Their problem is not the man from Mozambique, Zambia,
Tanzania, India, Italy, Rwanda, Nigeria, Uganda, Angola, or Democratic Republic
of Congo, let them look for their enemies in the South African parliament, the
Presidency and government departments across the country. Those are the real
enemies of South Africa not the Mozambican who runs a corner shop in the suburb
of Johannesburg; not the Nigerian who believes that a South African woman is
the sweetest thing since the apple in the Garden of Eden.
Apologies
alone will not be enough. The South African government must embark on a
national healing process. The Black South African is not done yet with the
anger or the pains of apartheid, and the slowness of post-apartheid recovery.
When he finishes chasing the outsider away, he will turn his gaze and anger on
his own compatriots, and the Mandela legacy would have been ruined. President
Ramaphosa must take South Africa through a new process of healing and
reconciliation, South Africa needs an anger-management programme for its
citizens on a very large scale. It is bad enough for an individual to slip into
depression; it is worse for an entire country to be depressed. South Africa is
in the grips of an obvious clinical depression. History may well help. The
young South African who is attacking foreigners needs to be taught the history
of his own country and present reality. South Africa is a free country today
because liberals and progressives across the world stood up to condemn the evil
of apartheid: a system that treated the black South African as a non-person on
his own soil. The black man in South Africa today can go to a mall, sit in the
same bus with a white person, inter-marry freely, in fact feel like a human
being because other Africans supported the liberation heroes of South Africa.
Here in Nigeria, civil servants had to surrender part of their salaries to
support the anti-apartheid struggle. Many musicians: Fela, Bongos Ikwue, Sonny
Okosun, Majek Fashek, Onyeka Onwenu, the Mandators, Ayinla Kollington, Sunny
Ade waxed records to condemn the dehumanization of the black man in South
Africa. Ghanaians, Zimbabweans, Ugandans decried the maltreatment of our
brothers and sisters in South Africa. Today, the same South Africans whose
parents and grandparents were saved from the clutches of white oppression are
proving to be a generation of ingrates. History saves a nation. South Africa
must teach its young population the history of their country.
President
Cyril Ramaphosa should not just send envoys to other African countries.
He should personally embark on a diplomatic shuttle across Africa. He
should also have a national address devoted to the challenge of xenophobia. He
must resist the push by the hawks within his own administration who nurse xenophobic
ideas and who in particular convert their sentiments to state policy. His
Minister of Foreign Affairs, the Defence Minister, and Deputy Minister of
Police should be fired. They may be good people ordinarily, but they have
proven to be very bad diplomats and spokespersons. Ramaphosa must make it clear
that these persons do not speak on this subject for either the government or
the people of South On Monday, September 16, President Cyril Ramaphosa is said
to have sent Jeff Radebe, Minister of Energy to apologise to his brother,
President Muhammadu Buhari for the attack on Nigerians in South Africa. Radebe
reportedly told President Buhari that 50 suspects have so far been apprehended
and that the South African government will not tolerate xenophobia. Radebe is a
very experienced politician. I have no doubts that he would manage to convince
President Buhari. But as he returns to South Africa, after what is
clearly a reciprocal exchange of special envoys, President Buhari must tell him
that the matter between Nigerians and South Africans is now beyond the
Presidential Villas in Abuja and Pretoria. This is one mismanaged case in which
international relations has gone from official corridors to the streets. Mr.
Radebe should also tell President Ramaphosa not to listen to those advisers who
believe that Nigeria is over-reacting. The only solution is that no
Nigerian or Nigerian business should ever be harassed or attacked again in
South Africa. It is within South Africa's rights to determine and enforce its
immigration laws but if any foreigner manages to set up home or shop in South
Africa, then the country itself has an international responsibility to protect
all persons within its territory. President Ramaphosa and his team must take
that duty seriously.
I
should end this commentary by commending the outflow, in fact the overflow, of
patriotism by Nigerians over the attack on Nigerians in South Africa. This is
not the first time the attacks would happen. There were cases of xenophobia in
South Africa in 1994, 2008, 2015, and now 2019, but this time Nigerians have
set aside political differences, and ethnic and class sentiments and insisted
that an attack on one Nigerian is an attack on all Nigerians. If the Nigerian
government had declared war and called out volunteers, there would have been a
ready army of citizens ready to fight the South Africans. Nigerians don't
always praise their governments. But there seems to be a consensus of opinion
that President Muhammadu, Nigeria's Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Nigeria's
Diaspora Commission got it right this time by making it clear that every
Nigerian life matters, including the lives of those Naledi Pandor and her likes
regard as criminals. The hero in all of this melodrama, however, is Allen
Onyema, the CEO of Air Peace, a Nigerian airline, which provided aircraft to
evacuate Nigerians, free of charge from South Africa. He deserves a
Presidential handshake and a national honour.
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