Xenophobia or Continental Racism? South Africa please give us a break!

One of my favourite stand-up comedians was in the city two weekends ago to a sell-out crowd of 15,000 for his second live London show in 2008, as he embarks on a world tour-ironically with Johannesbourg as one of his scheduled destinations. Being a huge fan with links with the promoters, I managed to secure an entrance to the comic´s exclusive After- Show gig, where he asked a reasonably mixed audience a question he had on numerous occasions asked in his previous concerts:` Who are the most racist: white people or black people?´ in an inimitable wry smile coupled with his trademark swagger and confidence-not apprehensive of being attacked with the so called daggers of ´political correctness´, as is the case in contemporary society.

Just so that I give my readers a crystal clear picture of the drama unfolding, the comic himself is African American whilst the audience at this small venue-myself inclusive-was cosmopolitan London at its best; a healthy mix of Caucasians, Asians, and of course Africans. So it´s easy to imagine how pretty uncomfortable I would have felt, and to worsen matters having both black and white friends sitting beside me inevitably created an imaginary gulf in our otherwise free flowing conversations.

Anyway back to the question of which culture was the most racists, there was by now an uneasy silence in the crowd perhaps telepathically appealing to the comedian to get it over with. As if in answer to their prayers the famous comedian then answered ´Black people!´ That´s right. In his words ´Black people are the most racist.´ Why? Because in his words 'Black people sometimes hate black people too'. That comment of course is open to a debate in which everyone is entitled to an opinion. But whilst battling with our opinions entitlements can we for a micro-second stop and ponder if we are in actual fact entitled to our facts? Because the facts on ground stare at us everyday like highway billboards and advertisements. Maybe,just maybe- it´s high time we embrace those facts.

The incident of ´foreigners´ being attacked, displaced and killed in South Africa last month has been a cause for serious concern as official reports of late has put the death toll at 56, with the injured and homeless over 600 and 80,000 respectively . It beggars belief that these ´foreigners´ who have been a victim of xenophobic onslaughts actually migrated into the country to earn a decent living, contribute to the South African economy whilst at the same time sending funds home to their families and relatives in their homeland. It´s mind-boggling that these ´foreigners´ overnight became victims of the resentments of the locals because they have proven to be well educated and perhaps more hardworking –which in the shallow-minded views of the violent perpetrators translates to ´stealing their jobs.´ The tragic part of this civil impasse is the fact that those ´foreigners´ aren´t really foreigners: They are Africans.

These so called foreigners are Zimbabweans, Namibians, Nigerians, Somalis and citizens from other neighbouring countries. South Africa´s population currently stands at 49 million out of which 3 to 5million make up its non-citizens. Some analysts currently put the country´s unemployment rate at 30% which some critics of foreign workers hastily attributed to foreign immigration influx. While there is no substantial evidence to back this claim there are compelling ones on ground to show that foreign workers in the last decade have been a contributing factor to the country´s economic renaissance. South Africa as a country in a recent study was cited as having one of the highest levels of foreign intolerance in the world and this should be a mirror for the continent in general. One would never have imagined that a country who until over a decade and half ago was itself in the shackles of Apartheid would today inflict a campaign of hate –or perhaps ´self-hate´-on its fellow African neighbours.

We can choose to blame President Thabo Mbeki and his henchmen for not arresting the problem of civil hate and tribalism at its grassroots; or perhaps the government´s slow-motion styled reaction to the violence. We can even go a step further to blame our deluded and ´power-intoxicated´ friend, Robert Mugabe, for inflicting so much pain on his own people; forcing them to flee en masse from Zimbabwe to South Africa. Or perhaps an ideal solution would be Africans taking one hard look at each other; exercising the ultimate humane gesture of embracing one other in one show of unity and peaceful co-existence.

You can all it Xenophobia, you could even coin it ´continental racism´. One thing remains for sure though: the peace loving citizens of the world call on South Africa with one accord, asking her to ´´ Please give us a break!´