The Sunday Mail
At the end of apartheid in 1994, the white minority, of less than 10 percent, owned 90 percent of the country’s land. Against the above background, the new government targeted to allocate 30 percent of the land owned by white farmers to blacks in the first five years.
The Zimbabwe Tourism Authority is holding a tourism indaba in Durban next month, the city where the new wave of xenophobia was mooted.
Nobody really knows how many foreigners there would have been butchered, robbed or displaced by then – as the episodes of xenophobic attacks continue to unfold.
As I write this, five have hitherto died.
All because somebody did not apologise for his rabble-rousing speech!
Well let’s start with those who have apologised. Take Baleka Mbete, the Speaker of South Africa’s National Assembly who called Julius Malema a cockroach, for instance.
She later realised her grave mistake and said: “I have been thinking long and hard about the remarks I made … I have concluded that my remarks – all offending statements I made – were inappropriate,” adding that the manner in which they came across was unfortunate and regrettable.
With that simple apology, everyone lived happily ever after.
I guess what Mbete thought “long and hard” about was the infamous “You have to kill the Tutsis, they are cockroaches”, messages which Rwandan local radio stations used to repeatedly play leading to the massacre of nearly one million Tutsis in the Rwandan genocide.
Then we have King Zwelithini, who is the leader of the Zulu Royal Family. His position gives him the highest traditional authority over the nation of the Zulus, and the influence of the words that passes through the teeth of the holder of such a position cannot be underestimated.
Not long ago, he said: “We must deal with our own lice. In our heads, let’s take out the ants and leave them in the sun.”
The “lice” and “ants” that he was referring to are foreigners in South Africa. To him, foreigners are just bugs, like cockroaches, presumably. But the king would not apologise for saying that.
The Daily Sun of March 25 actually quoted his spokesperson, Prince Thulani, saying that the king has nothing to be sorry for.
And so it is now, just like the king wanted – the ants are now in the sun. Ants have an average life expectancy of 45 days, unlike cockroaches which can live up to a year – which leaves us seriously concerned about the lives of our Zimbabwean brothers and sisters in South Africa.
The Zimbabwean legislators who met with South Africa’s ambassador to present to him a petition to stop xenophobia were told that the South African government cannot guarantee the safety of Zimbabweans in South Africa because police are stretched and failing to control the violence.
Against the above background, must the king remain unapologetic while more foreigners continue to die; be robbed, displaced and hurt?
Then perhaps he must be charged as an accomplice in every single act of violence as he incited the locals to take such action – “deal with our own lice”.
As I write, I hear the king has called for an imbizo on xenophobia to be held tomorrow.
Whether he is going to clarify his statements or finally apologise, that won’t bring back the lives of the five people lost, or restore the limbs dismembered, or build the shops and houses destroyed or heal the wounds sustained.
Granted, it may stop this whole madness.
I really find it difficult to accept that it’s a coincidence that the new wave of xenophobic attacks came at a time when South African activists and political movements were busy calling for the removal of colonial symbols.
Malema’s Economic Freedom Fighters, for instance, actually took responsibility of destroying and defacing several colonial statues.
It started with a bunch of University of Cape Town students who successfully lobbied for the removal of the statue of Cecil John Rhodes – the man who said that: “We must find new land from which we can easily obtain raw materials and at the same time exploit the cheap labour that is available from the natives of the colonies.”
And he succeeded in finding that land in South Africa, just as he did in Zimbabwe, and in Malawi. But we managed to get ours back, and it’s one of the blessings we counted yesterday as we were celebrating our independence.
The South Africans are yet to get theirs, fully.
And that is fast becoming an issue of particular concern. Which is why South Africa’s President Jacob Zuma is on record saying, recently,: “Land has become one of the most critical factors in achieving redress for the wrongs of the past.”
He, however, is apparently taking a snail’s pace in addressing that.
At the end of apartheid in 1994, the white minority, of less than 10 percent, owned 90 percent of the country’s land. Against the above background, the new government targeted to allocate 30 percent of the land owned by white farmers to blacks in the first five years.
But it had only managed to transfer a paltry eight percent by 2011.
If Rhodes knew then that taking the land of natives was a means to control raw materials, and the majority of that land is still not in the hands of the indigenous people, then Rhodes to me has not fallen yet.
The EFF has a quicker way – occupy all the unutilised land, in line with their party’s “expropriate land without compensation” agenda.
And that has been happening, albeit facing several hurdles with the police.
The efforts of activists, students and political movements in South Africa to get rid of symbols of colonialism ushered many indigenous South Africans into a deeper realm of enlightenment and consciousness.
They were beginning to ask many important questions in their minds.
When the biblical Adam ate the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, his eyes were opened and he saw that he was naked. He took action; he made himself something quick to cover his nakedness.
To the South Africans whose eyes were beginning to be opened to certain painful realities that they had hitherto been oblivious of in their country, until the legal and illegal removal of some objects of colonialism, it only meant that action would follow for this new Adam.
What if the students, leftist political movements and other citizens were going to wake up marching into the farms owned by the whites?
The whites some of whom are the very Englishmen that Rhodes boasted of, saying: “Ask any man what nationality he would prefer to be, and 99 out of 100 will tell you that they would prefer to be Englishmen.”
But I guess the homeless and landless people in South Africa don’t want to be Englishmen; they simply want to be owners of their land.
Now things have unfortunately taken a new twist across the Limpopo — the energies they were spending on pondering how to accelerate the redress of the injustices of colonialism have recently been absolutely diverted to something else — xenophobia.
The hands that were previously holding picks and hoes to till the land that Malema was leading them to occupy are now holding machetes, spears, whips, and other weapons.
Instead of asking, “Where is our land?,” they are now asking, “Where are the makwerekweres?”
The very brothers and sisters who assisted South Africa to fight apartheid are now suddenly “foreigners”.
While all that is happening, the Rhodes they thought to have brought down is laughing out loud, perhaps saying, “Look at those bastards, we really got them this time.”
South Africans must really start to place their priorities rightly.
So what if all the foreigners are to go back to their countries today?
Then they can suddenly start to qualify for the jobs they claim that foreigners are taking away from them?
Then those who own the majority of their land will summarily hand it back on a silver platter?
Rhodes is only going to fall when the indigenous South Africans optimally address the land question.
Yes, Rhodes is not fallen yet.
