Why we must struggle against Xenophobia!

In this Africa Liberation Day Postcard, Tajudeen Abdul-Raheem warns that "if care is not taken to take decisive action to stop the violence against other Africans and challenge the widespread xenophobia, South African businesses and other interests across Africa will soon become legitimate targets, not just for demonstrations, but for campaigns of boycott and who knows, even targets for sabotage and revenge attacks across this continent."

This Sunday, 25 May 2008, is Africa Liberation Day. This year’s celebration marks the 50th anniversary of this day set aside for reflection, celebration and rededication to the cause of Africa and Africans’ total liberation from social, economic and political injustices, initially by external colonialists but later neo-colonialists and their local agents. Today the struggle continues against the local oppressors and their foreign patrons in a renewed attempt at re-colonising Africa - through the combined forces of unpatriotic national leaders who sell our countries to anti-people globalisation and uncritical adoption of neo-liberal policies that continues to impoverish our peoples and ensures that the majority of Africans remain poor, even though ours is one of the richest continents in the whole world.

Central to the agenda of Africa’s liberation is the notion of ‘Africa for Africans’ and the unification of Africa ‘from Cape to Cairo’. As symbols go, both points were chosen not because they are the most symbolic representation of Africa, but because of the extreme geographic poles of this vast continent and its diversities. Yet both cities and the countries they are in have, at best, contested Africaness. Cape Town never fails to remind us that it remains a European enclave (that may apply to leave the AU and join the EU, if that is possible!). While a trip to the vibrant souks of Cairo by an African visitor is not complete without at least one Egyptian trader asking: ‘Are you from Africa?’; completely oblivious to the fact that Egypt is in Africa and that the proud civilisation that makes them feel superior to others, including other Arabs, was very much an African civilisation.

However, ambiguities about being African are not limited to the two cities or countries. 45 years after the OAU was headquartered in Addis, many Ethiopians still talk of, or see Africans, as others. In Egypt and South Africa, the anti-Africa feelings extend to areas that are ‘more African’ than both cities. The tragic events unfolding in South Africa around townships close to Johannesburg may have come as a surprise to those not familiar with the ‘rainbow’ nation after 1994, but not to Africans living there. We were all on a high about the end of apartheid, and swallowed the triumphalism and claims of exceptionalism as the legitimating ideology of the new post-apartheid state. If ever there was an inappropriate slogan ‘rainbow nation’ (later discovered not to include the colour black in it), this was it. It invited everybody but the majority black people.

I have been a regular visitor to South Africa since the inauguration of Mandela and have seen the rise in anti-African xenophobia, bigotry and discrimination against Africans. This took the form, from day one, of an anti-African racist immigration and visa regime.

Unfortunately as with everything else, the ANC leadership particularly Thabo Mbeki, tried to intellectualise the problem instead of addressing it. Remember, this is a President who claimed he had never known a person who had died of AIDS; and when confronted by a grim rise in crime, he retorted by asking whether crime was rising or it was more regularly reported. Government propagandists even suggested that there was some conspiracy by enemies of the new government to discourage investment and undermine the new dispensation. While there may be some truth in this, given the skewed media ownership and control in the country, one must beg the issue. Media does not create crime waves.

The denial default of the Thabo leadership means that problems are not nipped in the bud but rather debated endlessly, subjected to all kinds of panels, probes and investigations without end.

The anti-African xenophobia went through these motions. Initially it was thought that xenophobia was limited to some illiterate citizens (ignoring the ugly heads of university campuses, public parastatals, NGOs and board rooms). Illiterate citizens who would soon be rid of their ignorance as prosperity spread a la neo-liberal economic policies predicated on perpetual growth, with enough economic crumbs dropping off the tables of the new black bourgeois elite for the masses. Of course this is not how it is turning out. The new elite have proven to be more rapacious and the economic model they chose is not delivering as envisaged. But instead of the excluded masses turning on their elite, they find it convenient to vent for their anger and frustration in refugees - migrants from Africa who they blame for their inadequate housing or for stealing their jobs.

It is instructive that this violence is directed predominantly at other black Africans principally Zimbabweans, Nigerians, Somalis, Mozambicans and other southern Africans. They are the majority of other Africans in the country. How come this ‘anger’ has not extended to white immigrants from Europe and the former Soviet Union? Why it is not directed at new immigrants from Asia including Chinese and Indians?

It is encouraging that after initial shock sections of the South African establishment (the Human Rights Commission for example), and more importantly parts of the civil society, especially the churches led by the Methodist Church (that has been providing refuge to African refugees and asylum seekers before this crisis) are beginning to speak out openly. There are also attempts by local communities to reclaim the streets from criminal bigots. President Thabo Mbeki’s reaction remains professorial: ‘What is behind this? Who is behind it?’ I heard him asking on SABC Africa. Why can he not understand that we do not expect questions from our leaders? We expect answers and actions; concrete actions. If the South African political leadership is failing us, why are African leaders whose citizens are being killed not saying anything? Can you imagine if even one European, Canadian or American citizen had been attacked, what the noise would have been like?

And what about our busybody civil society? Why are there no demonstrations in front of South African embassies and High Commissions across this continent and abroad? Are they waiting for donors? Did we need donors to demonstrate against white apartheid? Why are we silent in the face of this creeping black apartheid? There is no point in making moral claims by reminding South Africans how the rest of Africa sacrificed in cash and kind for their liberation. Their memory has proven too short for that. There is no point reminding them that many of them were refugees in the rest of Africa and there was no similar incident of mass xenophobia against them.

What we need to do is to demystify the widely held belief that every African wants to emigrate there and that Africans in South Africa are taking jobs away from South Africans. The University faculties are full of other Africans, especially Southern and Western Africans. Would South Africa be able to sustain the entire educational system without the skills of these academics? The Somali stores that are being burnt grew because of a niche in the market not being met. South Africans also need to be made aware that the prosperity of their country, which they think the rest of Africa is coveting, is not wholly generated from within; prosperity, internal and external jobs are increasingly dependent on the rest of Africa. DSTV, MTN, South African Airways, Shoprite, water and management corporations, farmers, banks and other South African businesses, are rapidly expanding and minting money across Africa.

If care is not taken to take decisive action to stop the violence against other Africans and challenge the widespread xenophobia, South African businesses and other interests across Africa will soon become legitimate targets, not just for demonstrations, but for campaigns of boycott and who knows, even targets for sabotage and revenge attacks across this continent. A country that sees itself as the beacon of African renaissance, originator of NEPAD and chief lecturer on human rights, democracy and constitutionalism should be ashamed of itself for treating other Africans so appallingly. Especially in light of the fact that many of their leaders were themselves refugees or migrants in other African countries for several years. The bigger shame, however, will go to other Africans, should they remain silent in the face of this brutality and gross abuse of their rights.

On Africa day say “No!” to an attack on any African, from Cape Town to Cairo, wherever you may be. You can do something. Do so now.

*Dr. Tajudeen Abdul-Raheem is the Deputy Director of the UN Millennium Campaign in Africa, based in Nairobi, Kenya. He writes this article in his personal capacity as a concerned Pan-Africanist.

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