It amuses me that a people that cannot deal with their own demons demand that South Africans cage theirs! Nigerians, let your charity begin at home!
Tell me, are the zenophobic attacks in South Africa, condemnable as they are, as gruesome as the daily bloodletting by a coterie of terrorists, Islamic fundamentalists, and common criminals all over the country? Nowhere in this country today is safe for road travel. Even Abuja, the Federal Capital City, is no longer safe. Yet, we ignore the log in our own eyes and begin to mould a mountain out of a molehill with the occasional outbursts of zenophibic attacks in another place! Physician, heal thyself!
In all probability, South Africa is still a safer place than Nigeria. It is also, still, a saner climate – otherwise, our citizens will not troop there. Nigerians, make your own home habitable for your own citizens and deal with the JAPA syndrome that is emptying the country of its able-bodied youths and professionals trained at great costs who will be difficult to replace. Because our leaders do not personally feel the pains is why they do not know, do not understand, and do not even care about the havoc JAPA has done and continues to do.
The solution proffered by some of our legislators to South Africans’ zenophobic attacks on Nigerians leaves much to be desired: The nationalisation of South African business interests in Nigeria!
Is the attack government-sponsored, government-instigated, and government-condoned? Is it even the popular opinion of mainstream South Africans? Thank God, we have the strong views of a notable South African politician and opposition leader – real opposition leader of a real political party – condemning the zenophobic attacks and taking the perpetrators to the cleaners.
Julius Malema is his name; one of the youths who carried gun and fought for the liberation of South Africa from the stranglehold of apartheid colonialism. He was youth leader of the African National Congress (ANC) of iconic Nelson Mandela and Oliver Thambo before breaking ranks on principle to found his own party, Economic Freedom Fighters, which has been a thorn in the flesh of the Establishment.
If senators here are too preoccupied to think, what of the avalanche of legislative aides they are paid to keep? If we nationalise South African enterprises here and the South Africans respond in kind, do the senators think we will go unscathed? Without flaunting figures, there must be more Nigerians in South Africa than we have South Africans in Nigeria. Nigerians also have thriving businesses in South Africa, which will be impacted by any tit-for-tat.
Many notable Nigerian churches have thriving branches in South Africa. Religion, especially pentecostal Christianity, is our own business, which we export everywhere! I understand that so lucrative has this business been that some of Nigeria’s big-time preachers have moved their base overseas! If a mere one thousand Nigerians in South Africa are booted out, millions of Nigerians back home will feel its negative impact.
I read somewhere that the Senate in particular has become the preferred retirement home for state governors. After serving themselves, and not the people, at state level, they wangle their way into the senate where the ‘ilabe’ (soup-licking) continues, to use the exact word of my Marxist teacher, Dr. Segun Osoba! Each time, the plenary is near empty while the legislators busy themselves running their own private businesses and not the business of the people. Everyone pays himself hefty severance allowances while leaving office as governor. Before long, virtually every senator will be an ex-governor!
A sitting state governor in the south-east, whose tenure is yet to elapse (he won it in the most bizzare and controversial manner), wanted to contest for a senate seat, using incumbency! Even as a sitting governor? Yes! Audacious? Most audacious! That demonstrates the extent to which our leaders take the people for granted. Why the haste, you may ask? Because his election as governor was off-session, if he does not strike the iron now when it is hot, by the time he finishes his term and becomes ex-governor, the power of incumbency will no longer be there for him to leverage!
What is heating up some states today is the tango between the sitting senator (some of whom are ex-governors) and the sitting governor who is eyeing the ticket of the same senatorial district. Invested with the power of leader of the party in their respective states (with the notable exception, I think, of Rivers and Lagos states), Gov. Dapo Abiodun of Ogun state is said to be bent on ‘grabbing, snatching, and running’ with APC’s Ogun east senatorial ticket (if you understand what I mean!). His victim, himself an ex-governor of the state and the sitting senator, is Otunba Justus Gbenga Daniel aka OGD. Will OGD accept his fate or will he defect to another party to slug it out with his erstwhile friend?
I once read how Nelson Mandela twice outwitted a racist lecturer of his. First time, the lecturer graded Mandela’s script and wrote ‘Idiot’ on it, instead of awarding him marks. Mandela took the script to the man and said something like, ‘Sir, you didn’t mark my script but you only signed your name here!, pointing to where the man had written ‘Idiot!
On the second occasion, the racist, intent on getting even with Mandela, threw a question at him in open class. Something like: ‘Mr. Mandela, if you are offered two choices: money or wisdom – which will you choose? Mandela replied: ‘Money, of course! Thinking he has Mandela there, the racist exploded, ‘There you are, fool! If I were you, I would choose wisdom! Mandela knocked the man off his feet with his reply: ‘Every man chooses what he does not have! End of discussion!
Each time I think of how every nook and cranny of Nigeria is crammed with churches and mosques and, yet, we are some of the most morally depraved peoples on earth, I wonder what is the value of our religiosity? We are one of the most corrupt countries in the world. Transparency International’s corruption index confirms that year-in, year-out. Check out the names of everyone involved in humongous corruption in Nigeria – they are either Muslims or Christians. Those who troop out to accord them a resounding welcome are also professed Muslims and Christians. We are so religious, yet, so morally bankrupt.
Then I remembered the words of Jesus Christ that ‘They that be whole need not a physician, but they that are sick (Matthew 9: 12; Mark 2:17; Luke 5: 31). And the object lesson Mandela had taught his racist lecturer. Only then did it make sense. The sea of churches and mosques that we drown ourselves in is a function of our sickness – our moral depravity and decadence, our hypocrisy, our corruption, and our reluctance to tame our own demons.
When we point an accusing finger at South Africans, the remaining four point at us. The zenophobic attacks in South Africa, condemnable as they are, pale into insignificance when compared with what we live with, which has even become the new normal, as they call it.
When we accuse South Africans of forgetting the history of our contributions to their liberation, we are the same country that banished History as a course of study from our curriculum. Tell me, do our own Gen. Z and Alpha generations know the history of their own country?
Zenophobic attacks are a relatively new phenomenon in South Africa. The first set of Nigerians, mainly professionals, to set foot in post-apartheid South Africa were warmly welcomed. It was when rancorous Nigerian traders flooded the place that trouble began.
While recourse to violence is not the civilised way to address issues, we must also listen to the complaints and grievances of the South Africans. Foreigners bring drugs into their country and ruin their youths. We are having our own terrible experience with drug abuse here. Ask Gen. Mohamed Buba Marwa and NDLEA! South Africa is not the only country complaining about this. Nigerians are in foreign jails accused, convicted, and or awaiting execution on drug peddling charges. Ask Abike Dabiri-Erewa and the Nigerians in the Diaspora Commission.
South Africans’ complaint that Nigerians are taking their jobs is not peculiar to them. Everywhere, foreigners are the first targets once there is an economic downturn. We expelled Ghanaians from Nigeria. Ghanaians expelled Nigerians from Ghana. In the Sabo area of Ogbomoso stood a high-rise building constructed on something like a quarter of a plot of land, with the inscription ‘Olorun-se-won-le-mi-n-Ghana’. The owner was thanking God that he was expelled from Ghana! Otherwise… Talk of every disappointment being a blessing!
There is also the sore issue of our brethren who ride roughshod over their hosts; treating another man’s land as ‘No man’s land’ Does that sound familiar? The installation of an Eze Ndigbo was one of the grievances that poured petrol into the South African zenophobic attacks. A similar crisis was only narrowly averted in Ghana a while ago. I think one such Eze Ndigbo is cooling his heels in prison somewhere in Lagos state.
To borrow a leaf from Cassius, a character in William Shakespeare’s ‘Julius Caesar’, the fault is not in others but in ourselves that controversy follows us everywhere we go!
Besides, living down nearly 600 years of colonization and almost 100 years of apartheid colonialism will not come easy for South Africans. A free South Africa was forged in the crucibles of armed struggle, very much unlike Nigeria’s ‘flag Independence’. South Africa may be free today, but the psyche of violence inflicted by apartheid will take generations to recede. To make matters worse is that political Independence has not translated into economic Independence for the majority of South Africans, hence Malema and his Economic Freedom Fighters’ struggle.
Whatever the colour of your skin, if you talk, behave and act like the oppressors South Africans knew yesterday – and who still pin them down today by other means – then…
Former editor of PUNCH newspapers, Chairman of its Editorial Board and Deputy Editor-in-chief, BOLAWOLE was also the Managing Director/Editor-in-chief of The Westerner news magazine. He writes the ON THE LORD’S DAY column in the Sunday Tribune and TREASURES column in New Telegraph newspaper on Wednesdays. He is also a public affairs analyst on radio and television. He can be reached him on: turnpot@gmail.com 0807 552 5533, 0803 251 0195
