By CANUTE TANGWA(First published on June 2, 2008 in The POST newspaper)
For the first time, since black majority rule became a reality in South Africa, South Africans sang the famous N’kosi Sikélélé Africa (God Save Africa) as God Damn Fellow Africans! Within a week, a minority of South Africans rubbished the philosophy of Ubuntu (humanity to others), African unity and African renaissance. Understandably, such xenophobic violence towards fellow Africans places the ANC leadership and party between a rock and a hard place.
On the one hand, South Africans who call on immigrants to go home have legitimate concerns. For example, according to PRETORIA NEWS of May 28, 2008, residents of Itireleng, an informal settlement, north of Pretoria complained of insecurity, acceptance of low pay by immigrants which subverts government’s efforts at implementing minimum wage, falsification of South African identity documents by foreigners, unemployment, unhygienic living conditions of migrant workers, high influx of immigrants that outnumber residents and government’s lacklustre attitude to redress the situation, foreigners competing with locals for grants, informal jobs, housing as well as the corrupt nature of Home Affairs officials who sell documents to immigrants. According to residents of Itireleng, they now know peace since the more than 700 Somalis, Mozambicans and Zimbabweans were chased away. These also hold true for residents of Alexandria, a suburb of Johannesburg and locals of Durban.
On the other hand, the ANC government has to tread carefully. The year 2009 is election year. As usual, some would be quick to see the hand of the opposition in the violence. This might not be far-fetched because in Africa as elsewhere unscrupulous politicians make capital out of the murkiest of situations. However, the capital question is: has the ANC government delivered on its promises over the years? Siyabonga Mkhwanazi and Sapa in PRETORIA NEWS of May 22, 2008 state, “No solid reasons have been given for the outbreak of xenophobic violence, but one thing government officials are sure of is that it has nothing to do with government’s failure to deliver”. This statement is at variance with the complaints of residents of Itireleng, Alexandria and Durban. The government must fulfil its commitments to the people and formulate a new batch of immigration laws that ties in with the new economic order. From another perspective, the xenophobic violence is an indictment, though inadequate and misplaced, of the socio-economic policies of the ANC government.
The government of Thabo Mbeki is all too aware of the implication of xenophobic tendencies by South Africans for the African continent. The wealth of South Africa was built by the brawn of migrant labour from Mozambique, Lesotho, Malawi and Zimbabwe that toiled in the mines and farmlands. South Africa attained black majority rule thanks to the sustained economic and political sacrifices of frontline States like Zambia, Mozambique, Zimbabwe, Angola, Malawi, Lesotho and Tanzania and the African continent as a whole. On matters relating to Apartheid South Africa, the continent of Africa stood as one: providing moral, diplomatic, economic and military support to the ANC and other groupings. Thousands of South Africans were refugees in and were quite at home in several African countries.
Within the context of the concert of medium powers, South Africa is by and large the bridgehead. South Africa is a reference for African emerging economies, good governance, democracy and racial tolerance. As a rainbow nation, South Africa asserts itself as a veritable African union laboratory unlike the bilingual (English and French) and bi-jural (Common law and Civil law traditions) Cameroon whose leadership fails to see that the reunification of the two Cameroons (Southern Cameroons and La République du Cameroun) is a real experiment in African unity that should be nurtured. For sometime, South Africa’s Thabo Mbeki, Senegal’s Abdoulaye Wade and Nigeria’s then president Olusegun Obasanjo championed a New Partnership for Africa’s Development and a road map for African Union. South Africa became its arrowhead and epicentre. The violence of the past two weeks all but obliterated these lofty objectives and aspirations.
President Mbeki was apparently alluding to the moral debt his country owes to the rest of Africa and the consequences on African unity and solidarity when he said, “The shameful actions of a few have blemished the name of South Africa through criminal actions against our African brothers and sisters from other parts of the continent…In our own country, we must continue to live together with our brothers and sisters from other African countries as good neighbours…We must acknowledge the events of the past two weeks as an absolute disgrace…The violence and criminality we have seen by a few South Africans stand against everything we have sought to do to build a humane and caring society built on the values of Ubuntu. South Africans should remember their struggle for liberation had always been both national and Pan-African. We must never forget that our economy was built by the combined labour of Africans drawn from all countries of our region.”
Consequently, the business of educating and informing South Africans on the determining role Africa as a whole played in their liberation lies with frontline parties like the ANC and trade unions like COSATU. At the same time, the ANC government should not be oblivious to its business of providing shelter, health, land, education, security, employment, food and good governance to South Africans who are yet to see the light at the end of the tunnel.
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