Africa's shame comes home to roost with South Africa’s attack on immigrants

NAIROBI: A man watches as his shop is burnt down by a mob that claims he does not belong; a woman looks for a safe haven for her and her child, her life threatened for being married to who the society considers the wrong person, at the wrong time; friends turn against friends, labelling each other foreigners, outsiders, immigrants.

How did we get here? We carry the brunt of disenfranchisement, old wounds, new wounds, recurrent violence, institutionalised crimes.

And when the opportunity to vent these frustrations presents itself, we mete out what we consider rightful retribution, in many cases to the weakest and most defenceless closest to us.

We are the quintessential avenging angel, taking lives into our hands. We kill, we burn, we maim. And we do it all with careless abandon, so inured to the loss of lives that it does not raise our hackles in the least bit.

How did we get here? A lot has been said in the past regarding South Africa's xenophobic attacks. In 2008 when the rallying cry of 'foreigners taking South Africans' jobs' accompanied the attacks, we condemned them, even though we did not fully understand their actions. Sixty lives were lost then.

And now we watch again, helplessly, as the attacks on 'foreigners' take a strange turn. Most of us are mystified by the classification of Africans, many of whom come from the countries next door, as foreigners.

The attacks are fuelled by dislike, a fear of what is foreign or alien, and by hatred. How did we get here? South Africa has a rich history, a dark history. Dogged by apartheid for much longer than colonisation should have lasted, the legacy it left behind was one of self-hate and tribalisation, especially among the dark-skinned race. As Kenyans, the narrative of tribalisation being used as a tool to divide and conquer is not foreign to us.

We experienced the long-simmering effects of being told that those who spoke a different language, those of a different ethnicity were our enemies in the 2007/2008 political violence. Tribal factions are the tool of choice for political mischief, the easiest and most effective way of stirring the pot that already has cause to boil over. For how long, are we as a people, going to let ourselves be used as pawns in power games? To execute agendas we are not party to? It is said that with great power comes great responsibility. This is a lesson that needs to be drilled into African leadership.

Time and again, we are reminded how careless utterances can spiral out of control. A member of parliament referring to a different ethnic community as the enemy, a president casually making remarks regarding Westerners asking them to leave the country, a sectoral leader declaring that the reason there are no jobs for the locals is due to foreigners.

And then, with no warning, the disenchantment finds an outlet. The anger over an economy skewed in favour of 'others', the bitterness of living a life where hope seems to be slipping away by the day finally reaches the tipping point. So we take up our crude weapons and descend on hapless quarries, justifying our actions with the frustration that we feel.

But what we do not realise is that, far from making things better, the respite of venting our frustrations on the powerless only lasts a short time. It has the same effect as a drug, it is addictive and fleeting. And it creates a precedence that is hard to depart from.

As the violence in South Africa escalates, the rest of Africa, which stood by the country during the dark days of apartheid, is retaliating. Organisations that employ South Africans away from home are threatening repatriation of staff back to the country.

Goods are being boycotted, deals are being reneged on. We are slowly going back to those dark times, where we treated each other with suspicion and misgivings. We have come too far to go back there.

So while the South African nationals and their draconian immigration laws were seeking to reverse the effects of 25 per cent unemployment, the effects of Afrophobia are going to be more far-reaching and compounded. When unemployment skyrockets, when the economy deteriorates and there is a dearth of skills, then what?

I get it. We live on a continent that is resource-rich, but where the same systems that create overnight millionaires increase the gap between the rich and the poor. But violence is not, has never been, the solution.

Our leaders need to address the discontent, stem corruption and make concerted efforts to protect public interest. There is simply no way around delivering on the promises on which they were elected, the sanctity of life must come above all else.

We will continue to condemn xenophobia, Afrophobia, in the strongest terms possible as we stand behind those affected by the attacks. The violence stops with us.