Featured, Politics
The danger of the current xenophobic attacks and killings of African immigrants is that it may threaten the successful take off of the huge African single free trade next year since other African countries will not be comfortable to do business with a country which has shown so much hatred and animosity to their fellow Africans
By Goddy Ikeh
DESPITE the widespread condemnation of the ongoing xenophobic attacks and killings of Nigerians and some nationals of other African countries in South Africa, the looting and destruction of properties of Africans living in that country have not been halted by the South African authorities.
This has clearly demonstrated the lack of political will by the South African government to address this ugly and condemnable atrocities in some of its cities. It is more worrisome that this dastardly actions are taking place in a country with a recent history of apartheid and the commendable roles played by many African countries in their liberation struggle.
Although this resort to xenophobic attacks on Africans living in South Africa on the slightest provocation or disagreement between the nationals and the perceived foreign African enemies had been there for decades, but for how long can Nigerians and other African country stomach this madness of some these South Africans.
For the Nigerian government, this latest attacks appear to serve as the wake-up call for decisive action. “We have received sickening and depressing news of continued burning and looting of Nigerian shops and premises in South Africa by mindless criminals with ineffective police protection. Enough is enough. We will take definitive measures,” the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Geoffrey Onyeama warned on Monday, Sept. 2.
Onyeama also announced some interim measures taken by the Nigerian government to include the boycott of the just ended World Economic Forum on Africa in Cape Town, South Africa and the dispatch of a special envoy from President Muhammadu Buhari to meet with his South African counterpart, Cyril Ramaphosa on the issue. He disclosed that President Muhammadu Buhari was worried over the vandalism that has taken place in some Nigerian cities in reaction to the attacks on Nigerians in South Africa.
Speaking in the same vein, the Minister of Information and Culture, Lai Mohammed, told a news conference on Thursday in Abuja that the Nigerian Government would leave no stone unturned to protect Nigerian citizens anywhere around the world, including South Africa where they have been subjected to repeated xenophobic attacks with terrible consequences that include loss of lives and property.
He said that the South African High Commissioner to Nigeria had been summoned by the Minister of Foreign Affairs on the matter.
“The Government is also ready to evacuate Nigerians willing to return home from South Africa, in addition to other measures being considered to decisively tackle this cankerworm of xenophobic attacks against Nigerians in South Africa,” he said.
Aside from the condemnation of the attacks by many prominent Nigerians and institutions, including the Speaker of the House of Representatives, the Chairman of the ruling All Progressives Congress, APC, Adams Oshiohmole, who called on the government to nationalize South African companies in Nigeria, some foreign groups as well as Nigerian and African artistes have also condemned the attacks.
For instance, the Southern African Catholic Bishops Conference condemned the upsurge in violence against foreign nationals in Johannesburg, Pretoria, Malvern, Turffontein and Krugersdorp.
“Once again we receive reports of the authorities doing very little to protect the victims. We received report of police standing by idly in Pretoria while shops were looted and people attacked. Not a single arrest was made on that day.
“Once again the authorities resort to the old explanation: that this is not xenophobia, but the work of criminal elements,” the bishops said in a statement.
“Let us be absolutely clear – this is not an attempt by concerned South Africans to rid our cities of drug dealers. And this is not the work of a few criminal elements. It is xenophobia, plain and simple,” the bishops said.
In its reaction, the International Committee of the All Africa Music Awards, AFRIMA, said that it was extremely saddened by occurrences of barbaric xenophobic attacks on other Africans living in some parts of South Africa as widely reported in the media since Monday, September 2.
“The International Committee also unequivocally condemns the reverberating reprisal attacks in some countries in Africa such as Nigeria and Zambia, saying that the scourge of xenophobia in its entirety is a cancerous threat to Africa’s unity, peaceful co-existence and economic growth that AFRIMA is known to have championed for years through the instrumentality of culture and music,” it said in a statement.
Speaking of behalf of the International Committee of AFRIMA, the President and Executive Producer of AFRIMA, Mike Dada, expressed displeasure and disappointment over the widespread, calculated violence, hate and xenophobia on African migrants in Africa.
“While we view these unfortunate attacks and counter-attacks on fellow Africans as by-products of anti-poor policies of most successive governments in Africa which create huge inequalities and lack of opportunities for millions of young people on the continent, Africans should note that the myriads of common problems of joblessness, diseases, hunger, lack of quality education, extreme poverty, homelessness and lack of access to finance are the true enemies of Africa that can only be defeated only if there is a united, collaborative and peaceful Africa.
“The bigger picture by AFRIMA is to see a borderless continent where individuals live freely, trade and coexist in unity and leverage on one of the most powerful tools that bind us together which is music,” Dada said.
Some Nigerian artistes have also announced their boycott of previously arranged engagements in South Africa. Tiwa Savage and a host of others said that they could not are travel to a country where Nigerians and other Africans are brutally attacked and killed.
The South African government, which has been accused of not doing much to protect other Africans doing legitimate business in that country should realize that no nation has the monopoly of violence and that lives of South Africans and their companies and assets could face similar attacks in other African countries.
The danger of the current xenophobic attacks and killings of African immigrants is that this may threaten the successful take off of the huge African single free trade next year since other African countries will not be comfortable to do business with a country, whose nationals have shown such hatred and animosity to their fellow Africans.
There are already signs that this ugly developments, if not urgently checked, may push South Africa into a pariah nation as some African countries are willing to boycott South African products and even sporting events involving South Africa.
– Sept. 7, 2019 @ 12:45 GMT |
Tags: Xenophobia: The Ugly South Africa’s Burden
