I know that what will attract many readers to this little piece of mine is the curiosity to find out what a writer could be talking about the death of the iconic South African leader who died some years ago now. Well, very shortly, it will become clear here why we are invoking the death of this unique human being to attract readership to the issue we are discussing.
At a certain point in the presidency of Jacob Zuma something happened and he became so depressed. I cannot now remember exactly what it was. But he was so despondent and at the same time so angry with his situation in life and with his fellow South African citizens that he demanded that South Africans should accord him a small measure of the respect they had for the great Nelson Mandela.
The response Zuma got for that appeal was from the brilliant, passionate, nationalistic and mischievous opposition leader, the irrepressible Julius Melema. Malema simply told Zuma that South Africans were willing to accord him a measure of the respect he demanded but that there were a few tests, trials and temptations that Nelson Mandela went through which he said Zuma should go through before he could get what he was asking for.
The first of them, he said, with much mischief intended, was that Zuma should be denied access for 27 years to any of his numerous wives and side chicks, if they are any, so he can be denied enjoying that thing which men and women of the whole world love so much but are too shy to talk about much less, admit. Remember, this thing was one of the many deprivations that that great man called Mandela suffered in his Robben Island prison for 27 whole years.
Former president Zuma did not accept that small challenge!
I am citing this small encounter with former President Zuma and Julius Malema to buttress an argument I am going to make and which I hereby make that after the death of Nelson Mandela, there is no more any noble soul in South Africa that is why the so many damned things happening in South Africa is happening now. There are no elders with a conscience and nobility to rise up and talk about the brotherhood of man and the special bond of African brotherhood and the need for an end to the mistreatment and indignities heaped on fellow Africans in the name of being unregistered or illegal immigrants.
The attitude of South Africans towards fellow Blacks living legally or illegality in their country is so bad that the topic I wanted to give to this article is ‘’The Most Disgraceful Event to the Black Race in Human History Since the End of Slavery’’. We Black people with dignity and conscience either at home here or in the Diaspora feel so terribly humiliated by what is happening in South Arica. We feel it is distasteful, primitive, savage and repudiating. The image of fellow blacks pursuing their fellow black Africa and trusting a spear or plunging a knife into any part of a fellow African, falling him down and proceeding thereof to butchering him until he dies, is an act of savagery that should not be associated with a people they had all fought to restore their humanity, personhood and self respect. We denounce with great vehemence what is going on in South Africa with the little ounce of power left in our shocked malnourished existence.
Let me tell those who do not know that when the ongoing FIFA World Cup started, they were many of us soccer followers and enthusiasts in Africa who prayed on bended knees or in prostration to the Almighty God that the very first opponents of South Africa, Brazil, should humiliate and retaliate for the whole of Africa the evil that South Africa has done and are doing to fellow Africans by spelling the word ‘’xenophobia’’ for them. That is, Brazil should bangle 10 un-replied goals into the South African net in their very first match. Unfortunately for us, God does not answer bitter, hate-filled and unforgiving prayers against our opponents or rivals. South Africa therefore escaped humiliation with a nearly respectable two-nil defeat in the hands of Brazil.
We prayed for South Africa’s humiliation because all of Africa is aggrieved by the xenophobic attacks against illegal residents in South Africa and the agreement of their government with the savagery that the mobs on the streets are visiting on their fellow Africans. In fact, what has been revealed is that South Africa is being ruled by mobs without distinction. Let Africans not be deceived by the hypocrisy of President Cyril Ramaphosa who is now hypocritically saying to his people that immigrants have rights that must be respected. The truth is that every South African, high or low, is against especially African immigrants to South Africans whether legal or illegal. Like the unrighteous Biblical people of Sodom and Gomorrah the people of South Arica do not want foreigners, whether brothers or strangers, to enjoy what they consider their God given fortunes with them. And God hates a people who are like this.
The South Africans may have escaped humiliation on the soccer pitch but it is certain that at the appropriate time and God’s free will he will pass judgment against our brothers who did not recognize that we are not their brothers who must be treated with deep compassion and care.
For politicians like Ramaphosa, Zuma and others, the mob is working or speaking for them by exonerating them from their abysmal failure to provide the people the public goods they expect from their liberation from the oppressive Apartheid minority White rule. The mob is now saying it is Black immigrant Africans who are taking their jobs. Where were the jobs in the first place that the scramble for them is so fierce with or without the despised foreigners?
Instead of these failed leaders to call on God to give them the wisdom to turn these desperate fellow Black people to a smart workforce that will generate jobs for themselves and their fellow black South African hosts, all they know to do is to generate hysteria that creates nothing but tension and fear for them and the Jews (strangers or sojourners) who just came in?. as some experienced statesmen and states- builders have come to understand, exoneration and the blame game do not help anybody. What helps is diligent application of wisdom.
Our argument is that if there is any country that should be the most welcoming of immigrants or foreign Africans, it should unmistakably be South Africa. For, if the mass of the people do not know what efforts the whole of Africa made for the freedom of South Africa, their senior citizens should know and speak to the mobs on the streets that what they are doing to fellow Africans and that it should not even be done to any other set of persons on earth is bad. In fact, it is not only bad, it is disgraceful, very Shameful, null and void and of nogood conscience whatsoever. Permit me to invoke from their solitary retreat one of our Nigerian wordsmiths and political activists the right honourable Patrick Ohbahigbon, the man from the land of Igodomingodo, who will surely dismiss what the South Africans are doing as sacrilegious, uncivilized, unAfrican, untraditional, unmodernistic, unkoranical, unBiblical, unfair, unjust, null and void and of no good conscience whatsoever. We Africans of conscience are thoroughly ashamed of Cyril Ramaphosa, Jacob Zuma and the rest of those South African conscienceless leaders some of whom we used to hail as heroes of the South African struggle. When the moment for astute statesmanship came, no one saw any of them in action. They all disappeared and joined members of the mob.
The principled Mandela used to champion the cause of far-away Palestinian people to the great consternation of the Europeans and the Western world. It is this same Mandela that his successors and legatees are now murdering his Black brothers like wild animals in the forest. If Mandela were here, I bet that he will not be proud of those effete leaders in Pretoria and those senseless mobs on the streets of the country.
Mr. Idang Alibi is a former member of the Daily Trust Editorial Board. He can be reached on +2348036938729, 8050795253 or idangalibi@gmail.com
