South Africans are at it again, unleashing xenophobic violence on sub-Saharan African immigrants. And Nigerians are responding in kind, looting and destroying South African businesses in their country. Whether other countries affected by the barbarism will retaliate the Nigerian way is a matter of conjecture, but tit-for-tat can only leave the continent worse off.
The marauding gangs masquerading as patriotic defenders of a motherland have mostly vented their anger on inhabitants of poor neighbourhoods, who are no better off than them, but the mayhem has reverberated across the nation. The despicable acts of violence must be condemned. It cannot be that black South Africans, from time to time, rise up against their fellow blacks, ostensibly for taking their jobs — some say their women too.
South Africans must remember that African countries stood with them and fought in their corner during the dark days of apartheid. They cannot, therefore, turn against them. At any rate, members of the human community, nationalities notwithstanding, need each other and immigrants, the world over, have been known to greatly enrich their new homes. The latter’s contribution to the South African economy and culture cannot be gainsaid.
South Africans can only be deluding themselves that if the “Makwerekwere” — as they pejoratively refer to black immigrants — were uprooted, their country would be an economic nirvana. It is incumbent on Pretoria to address the twin problems of massive unemployment and an unconscionable wealth gap, a legacy of the decades of apartheid rule and the successive corrupt black regimes in the “Rainbow Nation”.
President Cyril Ramaphosa’s government must also prosecute and jail all the perpetrators of the violence and their sponsors.
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