It is a commonplace phenomenon that
when people are confronted with certain images or they hear certain words or
phrases, these external stimuli evoke pleasant or unpleasant thoughts, positive
or negative physical reactions or psychological changes. These reactions are
not necessarily based on personal experience, and may have been informed by
other peoples’ experiences or simply from routine information gathering. It is
akin to a mental scan of keywords in a narrative. Combined together, these
keywords give a mental image of the subject under question.
When this exercise is applied to the
mention of Republic of South Africa, the following words and phrases jump into
mind: xenophobia, semi-literate thugs, violence, corrupt leadership,
carjacking, rape, inferiority complex and ingrates.
South Africa has been in the news
for a long time for xenophobic attacks on other Africans. The images of
destruction visited on African immigrants have made the round in the world.
These thugs kill, maim and rape. They accuse other Africans of taking jobs that
they are too lazy to do, they accuse them for their economic woes and they
invent stories to justify their carnage intentions. Then they judge and hound
others like animals. Their leadership, both traditional and political gives
tacit approval and make unconvincing excuses in the press. Hear what Jacob Zuma
said of the attacks in 2017 “incidents of crime or feuds between people must
not be incorrectly characterized as xenophobic violence”! And Goodwill
Zwelithini king of South Africa's Zulu nation reportedly said in March 2015,
“head lice should be squashed and foreigners should pack their belongings and
leave the country”.
Their xenophobia starts from their
embassies where they subject would-be travelers to humiliation. They play visa
gods. And when finally the traveler obtains the visa, the traveler faces
further humiliation on their national carrier, where semi-literate cabin crew talk
down and humiliate their African passengers while they play the servant to the
occasional white passenger on the plane. They are conditioned to be ever
servile to their white masters. Forget their compromised independence. And on
arrival in their international airport, the immigration and customs officers
look for the most insignificant excuse to deny entry to the long-suffering
black African passenger. They are outrightly hostile. We remember the story of
a plane-load of Nigerians that was sent back for issues of yellow card. Nigeria
under Foreign Minister Ashiru immediately retaliated and made the South African
leadership eat humble pies. They have forgotten; they are back to their old
game.
It is this same people whose
leaders, cap in hand made a tour of different Black African states to ask for
support during what they term “their struggle”. Their leaders came begging for
money, for education places for their citizens, for military support and in
some cases for military training grounds in some African countries. It is for
these same people that many Africans shed their blood, suffered the invasion of
their countries by the apartheid regime and were destabilized. The
destabilization visited on Mozambique through the creation of Renamo by
apartheid South Africa many years ago has still not gone away. Renamo still
continues with the agenda of destabilization that it learnt from apartheid
South Africa after twenty five years of the Peace Agreement. And it is these
same Mozambicans who suffered so much for these South Africans that they now
hound and kill like animals in their streets.
South Africans now point scornfully at
the rest of Sub-Sahara as “Africans” and claim they are not Africans. They have
said it and other Africans should respect that. They have a right to say who
they are not. But they have not said who they are. But who really cares who or
what they are? We know they aren’t Caucasians neither are they Asians. They are
something that evokes xenophobia, semi-literate thugs, violence, corrupt
leadership, carjacking, rape, inferiority complex and ingrates in the minds of
other Africans. Their collective behavior represents an antithesis to the
values of hospitality that Africans hold dear. They cannot be part of us. . What
they do not know is that we own our lands in Africa they so much despise. And
they have no lands. And there is nothing they can do about it. Black South
Africans are just mere tenants on the African soil. Their masters own the lands
and own them too.
Black South Africans in their
collective delusions think their apartheid and race issues are over. They think
their so-called struggle is over. They think their independence is forever. If
they would focus a bit less on their hatred for other Africans and pay more
attention to the emergence of a new world order where peoples’ rights are being
threatened, they would understand that their so called independence of 1994 is
just an interlude. What Independence without rights to land?! They still have a
very long way to go. They still have a long struggle ahead. They will still
look for help in the future from other African States. And who will listen to
them? They have, in their naiveté and unbridled complex burnt all the bridges.
South African can never again pull the wool of Pan-Africanism over the eyes of
any Black African State or any African intellectual for that matter.
It is a crime for leaders of Black
African States to fold their arms or make some diplomatic noise while Black South
Africans maim and kill Black Africans. There are immediate measures that can be
taken. Firstly, cut diplomatic ties with South Africa, secondly, expel South
Africa from the African Union, thirdly reduce all trade links to the barest
minimum (they can’t be killing other Africans and be making money in their
countries), and lastly cut all sports ties with South Africa.
We really do not need South Africa
for anything.
