Dear Editor,
I have seen fellow Africans reminding us that South Africans shouldn’t be harming other African migrants because almost all of Africa fought alongside them in their fight against apartheid. I kind agree. Harassing fellow Africans anywhere in Africa over jobs and opportunities is the height of ignorance. Denying fellow Africans the chance to survive anywhere in Africa is the height of mental slavery. Remember how Ghanaians and Nigerians deported each other’s citizens? For one reason or another, Africans asking other Africans to leave their countries happens all over the continent. South Africans are not the pioneers of the African hate we see today! Tragic! But I digressed.
Let me say this again! I don’t believe any African should be denied the right to settle anywhere in Africa and make an honest living. But I am a realist, and I know that is a dream. But you can understand my pain in seeing Africans killing each other over citizenships they never designed. So I join others in condemning what South Africans are doing to their fellow Africans. Just as I condemn the way Africans treat those other Africans they consider “foreigners” in their respective countries. But on this South Africa issue, I have concerns about how some of us frame our position.
One, we may all share similar skin tones and live on the same continent, but that doesn’t mean we see each other as kinfolks. Heck, you don’t have to look further than our politics to see how our blackness and shared colonial space mean nothing when it comes to political hustling. Can you look at Gambians today and say we treat each other as brothers and sisters ought to? Look at how xenophobic some of us are in this colonial space. Look at how tribalistic some of us are. The more miseducated we are, the more vicious and mindless we can be in both our tribalism and xenophobia. Yet, we expect South Africans, so far removed from our shores, to somehow embrace our brothers when many of us can’t even stand our own family members and will do anything to deny them a livelihood. But just as it’s my dream to see Africans live and work anywhere they choose in Africa, it’s also a pipe dream to expect South Africans to embrace other Africans simply because we are all supposedly Africans or out of graciousness. I come bearing bad news for you: The average African is more in love with the colonial boundaries that divide us than the beautiful skin and shared cultures that should have united us!
I see many of us claim that because Africans fought alongside South Africans, they should be grateful and embrace us. In an ideal African world, yes, graciousness is a value our ancestors held in high regard. It’s also true that we fought alongside the South Africans. I was fifteen when I joined the anti apartheid movement. If my memory hasn’t failed me, it was led by a Sierra Leonean teacher who taught at my high school. There, I learned all about the ANC, memorised their national anthem, and the names of the struggle heroes. I can’t tell you how many nights my innocent, idealistic mind wished I were in South Africa, helping my fellow Africans. More so when I read Mark Mathabane’s book, Kaffir Boy. I cannot remember any book that made me cry as much as that one did. After the fall of Apartheid, I lived a long-held dream: Visiting South Africa. I went to Mandela’s home. Visited Orlando West in Soweto and Johannesburg. Visited the gallows and the fifty-two steps to the gallows. I had to be escorted around Soweto and on the streets of Johannesburg.
I know it’s insignificant, but heck, I still feel as if I played a role in the freedom of South Africa from its racist White settlers. Does that mean I have the right to go there and set up shop? Or does that mean South Africans, a people living with acute generational trauma and all its attendant effects, should be grateful to me and allow me to settle among them? Doesn’t that smack of a sense of entitlement?
Lastly, if you can ignore the reality that South Africa is broken for most Blacks living there, don’t they have a point that we should fix our countries and leave theirs alone? I know fixing Africa is far more complicated than just fixing it, but that’s beside the point. The point is, instead of African politicians taking umbrage at ignorant South Africans telling them to fix their countries, perhaps they should just hunker down and fix their countries! That way, our youths will not be forced into venturing across deserts and plunging into the seas all in search of a dignified life. There’s a reason you don’t see Singaporeans or natives of other countries hustling on Nigerian, Ghanaian, or Gambian streets! They fixed their countries! We can too! But that process must start with dismantling the colonial structures and confines we feel so comfortable within!
Alagie Saidy Barrow
USA
