SA March March: The Grand Betrayal of Africa

“The most serious blow suffered by the colonized is being removed from history and from the community.” Albert Memmi, The Colonizer and the Colonized.

A march is planned in South Africa tomorrow. While some consider it a patriotic uprising, others see it as a cry of anguish from citizens battered by unemployment, crime, collapsing public services, and a political class that long ago perfected the art of explaining away failure.

Whatever name it is given and whatever arguments are proffered, one fact remains stubbornly true. Whenever Africans are persuaded to turn their frustrations against fellow Africans, Africa itself is the loser.

The roots of xenophobic violence in South Africa did not emerge from thin air. They are rooted in decades of economic disappointment by long-suffering citizens.

Unfortunately, like in all of Africa, the promise of political liberation was never matched by economic liberation.

Nkrumah’s "Seek ye first the political kingdom and all else shall be added unto you,” has proven to be a mirage.

Seventy years after independence, the commanding heights of Africa’s economy remain in the hands of foreign oligarchs.

Our people in South Africa were told that freedom had arrived, yet many remained trapped in poverty, joblessness, and social despair. There is no denying the fact that frustration is real, and so is anger. The sense of betrayal can't be denied.

The tragic episodes that have periodically scarred South Africa bear testimony to this reality. Shops owned by fellow Africans have been looted. Migrants have been beaten and killed. Families have fled communities in fear. Lives have been destroyed. The victims were often not the architects of the economic system that produced the suffering. They were merely the nearest and most vulnerable targets.

This is the oldest trick in the political handbook.

Across Africa, plantation supervisors masquerading as presidents have become experts at redirecting public anger. When they cannot provide jobs, they invoke the tribe. When they cannot build industries, they invoke religion. When they cannot explain why mineral-rich nations remain poor, they invoke foreigners.

Xenophobia has now joined tribalism and religion as another convenient escape valve through which the frustrations of economically marginalized citizens can be discharged. The silence and the inaction of the Ramaphosa government confirm this.

The result is predictable. The people fight one another while the architects of their misery continue dining in peace.

What makes this development particularly tragic is that it represents a rejection of Africa’s own civilizational values. Africans did not invent the philosophy of “We versus Them.” That poison was imported. It is alien to the communal traditions that sustained our societies for centuries.

The Yoruba captured this wisdom in a simple but profound proverb: Ojú ọ̀run tó gbogbo ẹyẹ láti fò láì fara gbára / The sky is vast enough for all birds to fly without colliding with one another.

That is Ubuntu. That is Africa. Africa, before we became too civilized for our own good.

Ubuntu shows us the understanding that human flourishing is not a zero-sum game.

Yet today, many Africans are being encouraged to embrace a worldview in which another African's success is seen as a threat.

The philosophy of suspicion is replacing the philosophy of Ubuntu.

None of this is to excuse crime. Drug trafficking, organized crime, human trafficking, and other criminal activities deserve condemnation wherever they occur.

But serious societies do not solve criminal problems through mob sentiment.

One is entitled to ask some uncomfortable questions.

Where were the customs authorities when narcotics entered the country? Where were the border management systems?

What prevents African governments from linking biometric databases across the continent to combat illegal immigration and transnational crime?

Why do states that can monitor citizens for taxation suddenly become helpless when confronted with criminal networks?

These are institutional failures. They are failures of governance. They are failures of the very agencies established and funded to solve such problems.

Looting a fellow African's shop will not fix those failures.

Chasing a Zimbabwean, Nigerian, Ghanaian, Malawian, Congolese, or Somali worker from a township will not create industries. It will not generate electricity. It will not improve educational outcomes. It will not fix dilapidated roads and shanty towns. It will not attract investment. It will not alter the structure of South Africa’s economy.

The giant elephant standing in the middle of the room remains untouched.

The colonial economic architecture largely survived the end of apartheid.

While political power changed hands, economic power remained concentrated. Vast sections of the economy's commanding heights continue to operate within structures established long before 1994.

That uncomfortable reality receives far less attention than the activities of desperate migrants struggling to survive.

As the great Bob Marley warned, every day the bucket goes to the well; one day the bottom will fall out.

No society can indefinitely postpone the consequences of unresolved structural contradictions.

The lesson for Africans is clear. We must awaken from our ignorance-induced somnambulism. We cannot continue living as exploited tenants in lands that our ancestors built with sweat and blood.

The plantation supervisors benefit from chaos because chaos diverts scrutiny from their incompetence. Every xenophobic riot becomes another excuse. Every outbreak of violence becomes another distraction.

Ordinary Africans must therefore become the custodians of African consciousness. They must connect across borders. They must reject artificial divisions. They must understand that the challenges confronting Lagos, Johannesburg, Nairobi, Accra, Kinshasa, and Dakar are manifestations of the same historical problem.

The forces that divide us possess wealth, institutions, and influence. But we possess numbers.

And numbers become power when joined to consciousness.

The late Dr. John Henrik Clarke offered a simple formula for liberation: “Each one, teach one.”

Africa’s future may well depend upon how many of us heed that instruction before another generation is sacrificed on the altar of division.

©️ Fẹ̀mi Akọ̀mọ̀‌làfẹ̀ (1st Dan)

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