•A black immigrant in an orgy of xenophobic attacks
Xenophobia: They attack other Blacks who have a much better work ethic than their entitled attitude to work. They claim that other Blacks are taking up their jobs yet they cannot explain how a Nigerian shop opened by a Nigerian immigrant, employing South African staff, took South African jobs. They don’t fight against white people. They still accept that whites are superior to them and deserve to oppress them and have the best jobs. What they cannot accept is that Nigerians, Zambians or Zimbabweans are doctors, dentists, engineers, pilots and other “superior” professions that they believe are the prerogative of white people.
Any black man, specifically any African, who took part in fighting against apartheid in South Africa must surely be feeling a tinge of regret by now.
Nigeria, more than any other country, should be feeling wholesale regret. We were at the vanguard of the fight against the apartheid regime. We taxed every worker in Nigeria to fund our support for the liberation of those we saw as our African brothers and sisters in Southern Africa. From Rhodesia (Zimbabwe) to South-West Africa (now Namibia) to South Africa, Nigeria was the vanguard and back-bone of the liberation struggle.
Nigeria sent financial support, diplomatic support at the United Nations and other fora. We fought for international sanctions to be imposed on South Africa and they were banned from the Olympics and all international sports participation.
We came up with the strategy of smuggling out their youth and giving them a proper education in Nigeria and other countries – education they were denied in their homeland. Nigerian families hosted them for years as they studied at our institutions. Robert Mugabe’s contribution from Zimbabwe cannot be overstated. Likewise, the support of surrounding states (now called Frontline States), Zambia, Botswana, Angola and Tanzania, with Nigeria being the only non-contiguous Frontline State; a status given in recognition of our exponential support – support given without asking for anything in return.
But what was the point? As soon as South Africa gained independence, they granted visa free travel to their oppressors and those who opposed sanctions against apartheid. They turned against those that fought for their liberation and imposed roadblocks and hostility.
As the Ambassador to Namibia, I had to inform my host authorities that I would no longer mention that Nigeria was a frontline state because they, like the South Africans, welcomed their oppressors, granted them visa free entry but made things very difficult for our citizens living there, never mind those that wanted to visit – something that ultimately made me reciprocate by denying them visas to Nigeria for almost a year until Geoffrey Onyeama, Nigeria’s Foreign Affairs minister at the time, insisted that we roll out the red carpet for them without any reciprocal goodwill on their part. However, Namibians never held violent riots against Nigerians and other Blacks nor burn their homes and businesses as is the norm in South Africa.
Even before gaining independence, xenophobic attacks by South African Blacks against other Black Africans was a known phenomenon. As far back as the 1980s, at the height of the apartheid regime, the South African Blacks attacked fellow Africans, in particular those from Mozambique fleeing internal conflict and launched the “go back home” campaign. They elevated the craft of creating scapegoats, blaming fellow Africans for all the crimes – exactly the same script they follow with Nigerians and other Africans living in South Africa. Nobody can forget when they threw three fellow Black Africans off a train around 1998, barely four years after independence. They behave with a sub-human viciousness towards fellow Africans that makes apartheid seem mild by comparison. They always give the same envious, sorry excuse for their hyena-pack mentality – other Blacks are taking their jobs. They never accuse whites or Indians of doing the same.
After Independence, instead of the phenomenon, which was deliberately buried in order to present a united front in the fight against apartheid, getting better, it got worse. It is now the defining identity of Black South Africans. Their laziness, envy and greed have been violently channeled against their fellow African brethren that gave everything for their Independence. They are ingrates. They cause shame to every Black person whenever the subject of South Africa is brought up.
They attack other Blacks who have a much better work ethic than their entitled attitude to work. They claim that other Blacks are taking up their jobs yet they cannot explain how a Nigerian shop opened by a Nigerian immigrant, employing South African staff, took South African jobs.
They don’t fight against white people. They still accept that whites are superior to them and deserve to oppress them and have the best jobs. What they cannot accept is that Nigerians, Zambians or Zimbabweans are doctors, dentists, engineers, pilots and other “superior” professions that they believe are the prerogative of white people.
Every time they attack and kill fellow Black Africans, strip elderly African women naked in public, burn businesses owned by fellow Africans and attack Zimbabwean and Zambian truck drivers, they claim that they are protecting their economic interests. They repeatedly assert their right to protect their economic interests to justify their heinous actions.
So the question is this: were the white people who practiced apartheid not protecting their economic interests when they oppressed the native Black population? They were.
In 1982 when some British cricketers broke the sports boycott and played in South Africa for lucrative returns, were they not protecting their economic interests? They were.
When Britain granted Zola Budd, a South African middle-distance runner under sanction, British Citizenship so they could get more medals at the Olympics, were they not protecting their interests?
The countries that opposed sanctions against Apartheid – were they not also protecting their economic interests?
So if the Black South Africans can kill, maim, loot and destroy their African brethren who sacrificed money, energy, diplomatic measures, school slots, (gaining powerful Western enemies in the process) because they (South African Blacks) are protecting their economic interests, why on earth did we condemn the apartheid regime?
Why was it wrong for the apartheid regime to protect their economic interests by oppressing the native Black population if the freed Black population invoke the very same reasons to do worse to their brethren who gave their blood, sweat, tears and money for their freedom without expecting anything?
By their own logic, it was not wrong for the apartheid regime to oppress them in furtherance of their economic interests at all. In fact, going by their logic, apartheid was right! It was justified.
The white apartheid regime did not fight against fellow whites – they faced Black Africans, who were visibly different from them – racially, culturally, linguistically and in every way, except their shared humanity. But these xenophobes in South Africa do not have that excuse. They are killing their own brethren, who look like them and share so many cultural values. They are killing those who liberated them from bondage. They are worse than their apartheid oppressors.
By their own logic, we and the rest of the world that fought so hard to end the oppression of our fellow Black brethren without expecting any returns except to live together as brethren, are the fools.
They have never expressed any gratitude to the rest of Africa and the world at large for the sacrifices made for their freedom. They viewed it as an entitlement – the same way those living in Soweto view it as their right not to pay electricity bills and believe the rich white people in Johannesburg should bear the cost.
They view their liberation, financial sacrifices, diplomatic support, sports boycotts, the world-wide demonstrations, including songs by Eddie Grant (Give me hope, Joanna), Peter Gabriel (Biko), The Specials (Free Nelson Mandela), Nigerian families that hosted them for years as they attended Federal colleges, and so much unmerited outpouring of love as their due – their entitlement.
With hindsight, aside from the liberation of Nelson Mandela and the few voices that genuinely oppose this vileness like Julius Malema, there is a bitter after-taste whenever I think of the wasted years of fighting for, praying for and sacrificing for the liberation of South Africa. It feels like almost all of it was a waste.
By their own metric, we all owe the apartheid regime an unreserved apology for ever opposing their right to protect their economic interests by keeping the Black South African indigenous population under apartheid. How totally ironic.
•Lilian Onoh was Nigeria’s Ambassador to Namibia and former Chargé d’Affaires to Jamaica. This piece was first published in TheNiche.
