Scenes of violent attacks on Africans in South Africa have horrified many of the continent’s daughters and sons. I share that sense of overwhelming revulsion. Xenophobia, in all its forms, is an affront to our common humanity.
Yet revulsion, on its own, is not analysis. And Africa’s crises demand analysis, not sentiment.
The pressures created by irregular migration are difficult for any society to manage. Governments have a responsibility to secure their countries. That much must be granted by all fair minds.
What neither governments nor indigenes have the right to do, however, is to resort to extra‑judicial violence – whether the targets are citizens, residents, or migrants. Whether their presence is lawful or not. That line must remain firm and immovable.
Across the continent, the atmosphere has become exceedingly charged and febrile. Many outside South Africa, watching the convulsions of vigilante terror erupting in some townships, have reacted with unqualified condemnation. Entire populations are caricatured as naturally violent, inherently xenophobic, and more. South Africans themselves are reeling from the denunciation.
The African Union, or whatever remains of it, has been largely inert. The South African government, under Cyril Ramaphosa, has issued perfunctory appeals and done little else. He appears more able to intervene in distant conflicts in Gaza, than to govern the institutions under his own authority.
Some South Africans, frustrated by unemployment and the de facto collapse of policing, claim they must resort to vigilante action. They do not, though – that is the ironic twist – in their fury, say who bears responsibility for fixing the police system.
Ghanaians and Nigerians have not been left out of the fracas.We are never missing where there is a passionate argument in Africa.
The rhetoric has been sharp: South Africa is ungrateful, a cultural embarrassment to Africa, a betrayal of the ideals of African unity. But this is where a continent that has not taken the study of its own history – even its contemporary history – seriously, gets it wrong.
The analysis soon settles on the sensational and the surreal. It pathologises South Africans, all of them, with no sense of history.
The African people must use this moment to reflect. Pan‑Africanism cannot be built on metaphysical rhetorical euphoria alone.
Nkrumah’s 1963 approach to African unity was metaphysical. After his overthrow, he revised his method, though not his commitment to the objective. The seductive notion, in 1994, of a rainbow nation emerging from the ashes of apartheid was similarly romantic. It was emotionally appealing, but analytically unsteady, maybe even reckless. No nation can unite around mass misery.
Deprivation and mass migration come together in explosive social brews. That is the context of the xenophobic convulsions we see today.
Extreme inequality produces violence. Where there are large migrant populations living alongside economically abandoned and stranded indigenes, the migrants become convenient fodder.
This is not new in Africa.
In 1969, with Nigeria in the throes of a civil war that would leave close to two million people dead, Ghana’s Prime Minister Kofi Abrefa Busia – yielding to domestic pressures – expelled thousands of Nigerians. Many had lived in Ghana for generations. The conditions were harsh enough that Adu Boahen, who was sympathetic to aspects of Busia’s politics, described the episode as “a stupendous blunder.” The attached video gives a sense of what occurred.
The Biafran war itself contained strong elements of anti‑Igbo hostility within Nigeria. Xenophobia is not genetic, it has socio-economic causation.
In 1983, under Shehu Shagari, and again in 1985 under Muhammadu Buhari and Tunde Idiagbon, the Nigerian government returned the favour to Ghanaians. Hundreds of thousands were expelled under traumatic conditions.
In recent weeks, Cameroon has experienced xenophobic flashes targeting Nigerians.
South Africa is therefore not unique in this despicable display of inhumanity, which is what it is. This lunacy has appeared elsewhere. Europe once spoke of “the Jewish problem.” It animates the Trumpian imaginary against immigrants. It helped propel the calamitous Brexit sentiments.
Amílcar Cabral understood something fundamental: Pan‑Africanism cannot be built on foundations of extreme deprivation and mass indignity. It must have a material basis to thrive, not economic collapse.
To stamp out xenophobia, the wellbeing of the many must improve. The ANC, especially in the last fifteen years, has failed hopelessly at this. Surrounded by other failing countries, South Africa now sits atop a combustible mix of inequality, unemployment, and institutional decay.
Africans can choose to trash each other. Or we can face the reality that metaphysical Pan‑Africanism, on its own, promises “a miracle that leads nowhere.”
This latest xenophobic crisis must lead to a new conversation – one that acknowledges a fundamental truth:
The historical task before Africa today is to eliminate extreme poverty by improving the material conditions of millions.
Poverty can create bestiality.
Unity requires that the overwhelming majority have a means to live in dignity.
The scenes in the attached video are not new. Nor are they uniquely South African, as this happened in Ghana. They remind us that unless we confront the structural roots of our crises – in our schools, our media, our faith systems, and our politics – Africa will face an even bigger fire next time.
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