AFROPHOBIA: Only force will jolt that stubborn man

26 Apr, 2015 - 00:04 0 Views

The Sunday Mail

The worst part of the latest wave of Afrophobic madness in South Africa has subsided. The dogs of war have been caged or are being hunted down so they can be caged.

It is an experience the South Africans as a collective would want to forget very fast. Especially the politicians.

The attacks have badly damaged South Africa’s name and image at home, in the region and beyond.

South Africans are once again forced to hang their heads in shame following the latest bout of Afrophobic insanity which left at least seven people dead and exposed us to some of the most shocking acts of human barbarity against man.

People might want to theorise and philosophise about the causes of these acts of poor on poor, black on black savagery. Short of naive denialism, the answers stand out as starkly as Table Mountain and South Africa needs serious help to dismantle the statue of apartheid.

If more than 27 million South Africans, black South Africans, are said to live below the poverty datum line 20 years into independence, what does that say about the meaning of freedom?

Of the 30 percent of arable land the ANC government promised to deliver to blacks at independence in 1994, only less than six percent have been transferred.

The government has no money to purchase land from those who stole it and displaced the indigenous people since that Dutchman land at the Cape all those centuries ago.

The ANC has been very timid, almost apologetic, in dealing with the pernicious legacy of apartheid. It is as if they feel guilt for removing the whiteman from political power, his God-given place.

All the racial economic imbalances are treated as if they were God given and are expected to resolve themselves in an evolutionary as Africans gradually get educated.

The situation is not helped by a constitution which seems to have been drafted to recognise only white property rights and institutionalises racial inequality.

Then there is the bogey of Zimbabwe next door.

All the scum who could not endure black majority rule in Zimbabwe found a safe haven in the land of saintly Mandela.

They told gory tales of the plight of displaced white farmers in Zimbabwe. Hunger among Zimbabweans as a result of Mugabe’s “destructive” land reform was always told with hyperbole.

This has always haunted the South African political leadership each time they think about alleviating the plight of poor Africans. They are told to just look across the Limpopo. There is always a red flag about how not to tamper with the property rights of the whiteman.

The effects and impact of sanctions imposed on the Zimbabwean economy as punishment for redistributing land are deliberately discounted while mismanagement, corruption, cronyism, human rights violations – all of them hallmarks of African governance architecture – are given a macabre prominence as the cause of poverty and human suffering.

Our Western sponsored opposition has not been found wanting in corroborating these horror stories.

They have excelled each other in fabricating bizarre tales of torture of unimaginable egregiousness to secure political asylum.

Zanu-PF has been portrayed as an ogre devouring its offspring. The naive are ready to listen and believe when it is coming from the horse’s mouth, especially when that horse is black and the ogre is one Robert Mugabe.

The Afrophobic attacks on poor fellow Africans by South Africa’s frustrated, uneducated and unemployed underclass presents an opportunity for South Africa to make amends, to talk hard to its stubborn white population that their laager mentality must change, that their paradise is becoming a threat to national stability.

It is time to tell the whites that those who refuse to reform risk a bloody revolution. The mean-spirited, trickle down myth is slowly evaporating. There will come a time soon in South Africa when it will become morally reprehensible to deploy poor black soldiers to intimidate poor and hungry fellow blacks just to secure the interests of a minority white population.

But the challenge goes beyond the ANC government now.

This week Zimbabwe hosts a Sadc summit whose key agenda item is Industrialisation Strategy and Roadmap.

Speaking soon after he assumed the chair of the regional bloc in Victoria Falls last year, President Mugabe appealed to South Africa as the economic powerhouse of Sadc to help fellow countries industrialise.

He decried the unfair advantage South Africa enjoyed in terms of exports to the region.

What is however evident is that the ANC government doesn’t control, let alone run, the South African economy.

It is an enclave economy almost exclusively for the enjoyment of a white racial minority and their kith and kin in the west.

As such, these people can never reform the South African economy for the benefit of blacks in the region when they cannot share its wealth with the black majority.

There are those in the opposition who have always protested against the African Union doctrine not to interfere in the affairs of other states.

This is the time to turn the tables. South African needs help from its neighbours to deal with its white settlers. It has been described as the most unequal country in the world in terms of income disparities.

That has not jolted the conscience of the white. Only force will jolt him. His stubbornness is becoming the greatest threat to regional stability and economic integration.

That is the reality which Sadc and the African Union must confront. People can blame the ANC government until hell turns into an ocean but that will not soften the heart of the white South Africa.

There is need for a united front to deal decisively with flourishing apartheid, not only for the good of South Africa but the entire continent. It does appear that white colonial rule did not end with majority rule in South Africa in 1994.

Instead black rule seems to have provided it with a protective moral amour to blossom without the encumbrance of political accountability.

◆ Joram Nyathi is the Zimpapers Group Political Editor.

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