The Sunday Mail
One wonders where some of the South Africans get their airs and graces from when the whole region paid the price for their freedom. Those who have doubts should ask the Angolans.
By Nick Mangwana
Racial prejudice, intolerance, stereo-typing and xenophobia are up there on the bigotry ladder.
One of the key explanations of bigotry is simply ignorance. For what else can explain the level of intolerance of a few misguided South Africans of foreigners?
And it has to be added for good measure that it is not only foreigners; it is non-white foreigners.
If one is white then as a tribute to the legacy of apartheid and the accompanying inferiority complexes, one is safe.
The irony of this whole matter is that most of the nationalities under attack bore the brunt of the apartheid machinery unleashed on them for supporting the democratic desires of the oppressed black South Africans before 1994.
Paradoxically, the system of apartheid that was being fought was based on the same prejudices and stereotypes that some South Africans are now discharging on fellow Africans in a process which psychologists may identify as transference.
This is the transferring of one’s childhood experience onto a new object.
It is the same psychopathology that makes an abused person turn into an abuser in later life.
The same, again, which makes those who witnessed domestic violence as children become spouse-bashers in their own relationships and a bullying victim into a bully.
Ironically, one would have expected that victims would have learned the pain of being one and, therefore, more equipped to empathise, but, alas, it doesn’t work like that, does it?
A victim looks for their own victim.
The South Africans experienced racial prejudice where race was enough basis for aversion and hate. Now they use other people’s backgrounds as a basis for xenophobia.
This is a case of tragic history repeating itself with again disastrous consequences. It is a sad story of South African hypocrisy. Let it be clear that it is not all South Africans who are this ignorant. It is always a few misguided individuals.
Those who read the Holy Book would know it says, “A little leaven, leavens the whole lump.”
It takes a small amount of yeast to ferment a full batch of dough. But then if you add an irresponsible king in the mix, the dough becomes a bomb.
Strangely, it is this same king who should have reminded people that Angola, Botswana, Lesotho, Mozambique, Swaziland, Tanzania and Zimbabwe once formed the Frontline States against apartheid. One term used to define a frontline in the war theatre is the combat zone.
It means that during the fight for South African democracy, these countries were part of the battle ground. Their citizens embraced the Pan-Africanist spirit and proclaimed that no freedom shall be total until the people of Azania were free from the bondage of apartheid, and, boy, did they pay a heavy price for it.
And before anyone says Nigerians were not part of the Frontline States, there is a figure to think about. For now the reader is just beseeched to hold on to the thought of US$45 billion, which we will come to later.
One of the most affected nationalities is the Mozambican.
It possibly helps to remind the bigots what they might be forgetting. Mozambique had a whole area and a major base opened for uMkonto weSizwe. This led to many bombings and commando raids by South African defence forces and saboteurs.
More importantly, Mozambique possibly lost its iconic leader — President Samora Machel — to its stance on fighting for the liberation of the black majority in South Africa.
Over 250 000 Mozambicans lost their lives to the contra-war waged by Renamo whose sponsorship had shifted from Rhodesia to South Africa. Over a million more were displaced and so was the region destabilised.
They took all this like good neighbourly Africans.
Those old enough would remember the useless Nkomati Agreement of 1984. Useless because Mozambique was never going to sell out its brothers by chucking the ANC out of its territory. The economic cost and developmental retardation endured by Mozambique to help to bring democracy to South Africa is huge.
It is absurd for such a nation to now have its citizens barbecued in the street by an uncouth, forgetful and ungrateful mob.
How short some memories are!
But it wasn’t Mozambique alone, was it?
Zimbabwe had the Kevin Woods, Phillip Conjwayos and Michael Smiths on a Devil’s Mission not only to destroy the ANC.
Who ended up dying?: Zimbabwean people. Kevin even brags of having had the blueprints for the assassination of President Mugabe at the behest of the apartheid regime.
How Dambudzo Marechera’s sister, Tsitsi Chiliza, must be turning in her grave on seeing her compatriots being necklaced on the streets.
How could she not when she died at the end of the apartheid bomb booby-trapped in a television set whose target was (the now President) Jacob Zuma. Yes, President Zuma is possibly alive today because a Zimbabwean woman paid the price with her own life.
Add that to those car bombs exploding everywhere in Zimbabwe.
One wonders where some of the South Africans get their airs and graces from when the whole region paid the price for their freedom. Those who have doubts should ask the Angolans.
Even though Angola does not border South Africa, it played a major role in dismantling apartheid. In 1976, it defeated the invading South African defence forces outside Luanda. This event became a major rallying point and also an event that is credited as inspirational to the South African townships.
It gave an indirect inspirational hand in the Soweto uprisings of 1976. More than a decade later, the SADF were defeated again in the famous battle of Cuito Cuanavale in which the Cubans played a major role leading directly to the independence of Namibia.
This accelerated the demise of apartheid as it provided a moral blow to the apartheid regime and galvanised the South African pro-democracy forces.
The price was the death of many Angolans and the displacement of hundreds of thousands others.
Enough of trekking into history; just one last one. That US$45 billion we held in abeyance. That was the cost to Nigeria for helping dismantle apartheid.
Granted, our West African brothers are everywhere and some of them engage in nefarious and fraudulent activities exemplified by the 419 scam, but that does not detract from the fact that the whole Nigerian foreign policy during that whole era was centred on eradicating apartheid.
It has to be given its credit for making the fight against apartheid an article of faith. Military regime after military regime with a few interludes of civilian governments took a foremost stance in that fight. Nigeria refused to export oil to South Africa, sacrificing an estimated US$45 billion in 15 years.
Xenophobia is humiliating. Nobody should be put through such an indignity. What is peeving countries that paid such a heavy price for fighting apartheid is that nationals from those countries that made the walk to freedom very long are spared the hate.
It is those who are still smarting from the price of making South Africa a so-called “Rainbow Nation” who have fallen victim to ungrateful xenophobes.
The South African authorities have also fallen short. Where is the Xenophobia Task Force? Despite all the video and photo evidence, there was no conviction for the murder of the “burning man” Ernesto Alfabeto Nhamuave.
The song “Fire in Soweto” by Sonny Okosun has just been given a new meaning.
In 1977, it was about the white supremacists burning the people. Now there is a new pungent smell of burning African flesh.
This from the very people who should know better. How can these marauding mobs be left to maim, burn and mutilate other human beings like it’s a Blood Sport?
And the deafening silence of the Western powers is more fascinating than disappointing. There are no commercial interests so we could not have expected any less.
Didn’t the Holocaust develop from xenophobia?
Isn’t anti-Semitism both racial and xenophobic? Why then is there such a muted response? What is the difference between the intolerance being shown by the xenophobes and that being shown by Islamic State (Isis) besides the race and social station of the victims?
Why is no foreign capital yanking in the South African ambassadors even for a “friendly chat” (in diplomatic parlance)? Would it be stretching it to say that a suggestion of institutional collusion in all this should be rightly inferred? There are systems for addressing immigration challenges. Lynching is clearly not one of them.
The same level of political will shown against criminals during the World Cup in 2010 should be shown against the xenophobes.
