South Africa: a Rainbow Nation without the colour black

South Africa: a Rainbow Nation without the colour black

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By Mutumwa D. Mawere
(www.mmawere.com)

THE celebration of Africa Day provides yet another opportunity to reflect on what it means to be an African and whom the continent is intended to serve.

South Africa is the youngest country in Africa and yet it has only taken 14 years to expose the extent to which the notion of African citizenship is contestable and perishable.

When one thinks of who is truly a South African, the answer is complex -- reflecting the historical, psychological and cultural dimensions of the matter.

A white person from Poland, for example, is readily assimilated into the South African society than a Mozambican-born black African.
The recent black on black violence in South Africa may ultimately be a symptom of a deep seated problem that may have its roots in the foundation of the colonial and apartheid state. At the core of the apartheid state was the proposition that civilisation had a racial context and content to the extent that a black person’s contribution to nation building was marginalised.

Accepting this proposition necessarily creates real and devastating consequences for black Africans who may be as adventurous as their white colleagues to cross borders and sell their services in countries that the colonial system did not define as their authentic home.

In terms of migration of black Africans, the post-colonial experience has not elevated their status and standing to the extent that xenophobia becomes a real and significant threat to the creation of a United States of Africa.

Who is an African? It may at face value be a simple question but it is at the core of the dispute in South Africa whose relevance is not restricted to South Africa. South Africa is not the first country in Africa to expose its violence against blacks born in sister African countries but what makes the current situation in South Africa important is that the country is too important economically and politically in advancing the African project for anyone to ignore the implications arising from the black on black violence.

To date, the only violence targeted at whites in South Africa has been largely defined as criminality and hence the elevation of crime as one of the single most important variable in contemporary South Africa.

The migration of black Africans to South Africa is not accidental as was the migration of white people from Europe. Whereas Europeans are generally perceived to add value to nation building, their black counterparts are largely regarded as parasites.

South Africa has provided an African home to many prominent Africans who would otherwise have been domiciled in traditional destinations for diaspora Africans i.e. Europe, Australian and the Americas. It is not in dispute that such Africans have brought with them capital, skills and experience. Furthermore, they do contribute to the fiscus for the debate on xenophobia to be misconstrued as if blacks have not added value to the success of the post-apartheid state.

The history of South Africa and the peculiar role of black South Africans in it have created a distorted and dualistic economic structure whereby black skills were not developed deliberately to create a permanent need for white skills. It has been recognised that for South Africa to grow, it requires an infusion of skills and yet a logic seems to have developed that such skills should not be in the form of fellow black Africans.

Although the post-colonial Zimbabwean experience has produced an absurd outcome, it cannot be denied that valuable skills needed for any country in South Africa’s condition have been created at great social and economic cost. Such skills are universally portable and it is not surprising that South Africa has been the major beneficiary.

What is significant is that notwithstanding the three million Zimbabweans living and working in South Africa, no attempt has been made to organise such a constituency into a political force in the country in as much as the Jews, for example, in America have organised themselves.

About 20% of the Zimbabwean population has its roots in South Africa in as much as a significant proportion of the South African population has its roots from other African nations. If the ugly face of xenophobia demonstrated so far in South Africa is allowed to take root, it poses a threat to many South African businesses that have targeted the rest of the continent as a market for growth.

If South African mining, commercial and industrial groups who have the luxury of exporting their skills are then prevented from doing so as a reaction to xenophobia, I have no doubt that this will not be in the interests of South Africa.

The apartheid system had its own rational in terms of the living arrangements between blacks and whites. It was and still remains unthinkable for black and white people to live together in the same townships. The distance between large black townships and white suburbs shows the extent to which whites were aware of the potential danger of living close to blacks and thereby expose poor blacks to the extent of their economic gains and affluence.

What seems to be a problem is that most of the black immigrants have no system in place to allow them to choose where they can live and as such they are easy prey to their local black citizens.

What makes the xenophobia issue so complex is that we still have black African Presidents who argue that their countries’ resources must be reserved for indigenous nationals. If this argument is accepted, then the seeds of xenophobia must be rightly located in the reckless language of African politicians. It is also significant to note that even in the case of South Africa, if there were no Zimbabweans taking the few jobs such jobs would be available to blacks and not given to other foreigners.

The post-colonial experience has further exposed the hypocrisy of the African political economy in that non-black foreigners are readily embraced to exploit natural resources while blacks are targeted and in many cases externalised.

Who owns Africa’s resources? I am confident that if the real construction of Africa’s wealth was known, the nature and context of xenophobia would take a different tone.

English people in South Africa created Old Mutual in 1845 and the Afrikaners got angry and created their own Sanlam but in post-colonial Africa, we still have to witness the positive anger of black Africans and maybe one day in our lifetime we will see the emergence of an inclusive black mutual.

Mutumwa Mawere's weekly column is published on New Zimbabwe.com every Monday. You can contact him at: mmawere@global.co.za
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