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The reaction of some of the governments of African countries to the latest immigration related unrest being experienced by South Africa is, to say the least, disappointing and worrying.
As the Reporter Newspaper, a responsible media house that does not promote hate and or criminality, we believe that the immigration issue in South Africa and in fact elsewhere on the continent and in the world cannot be addressed through emotions, violence, use of threats or blackmail as it appears to be the case, particularly in respect of the responses of both the government of Ghana, as well as that of Nigeria, who have threatened all manner of retaliatory action against South Africa, including targeting as well as harming its commercial interests in their respective territories. This hardline approach by some of these African countries and their increasingly hostile attitude towards South Africa is not helping anyone, including themselves along with their own citizens.
In fact, if anything, this is a missed opportunity. These countries are missing an opportunity to look inwards as to what is it that is driving citizens away because Nigerians, Ghanaians, Congolese, Somalians, Zimbabweans, Mozambicans are not only found in South Africa and are not only perceived to be a nuisance in South Africa, but elsewhere across the world, where at times they receive worse treatment than what they have been subjected to here in South Africa by pressure groups such as March and March, Operation Tutula, and others. It is rather sad that the governments of these countries do not realize the extent things have gone to in terms of rule, the extent of their own governance failures.
Currently, a South African child asked in school what do they want to become in life. They are likely to pick one of the trending careers. Somebody can say ‘I want to be an actor, I want to be a police officer like my dad, I want to be a teacher like my uncle, I want to be a nurse, I want to be a doctor and help people,’
There are so many things that a South African child can aspire to be. But sadly, in some of our African countries, Nigeria and Ghana included, people literally aspire, and in fact not just aspire, but pray, to become citizens of other countries. Social media is flooded with videos of citizens of these countries, Zimbabweans, Nigerians, Ghanaians, celebrating after merely securing a visa to travel to Canada, the USA, Europe and anywhere else in the world where they think is better than home
That just demonstrates the level at which they have come to hate their own countries. Meanwhile, down here, we say there’s no place like home. And that expression does not make sense to an average Ghanaian because they have lived a hard knock life from when they were born. It’s either war, corruption, mismanagement of the economy and of institutions of government, all of these has reached unacceptable levels.
And it is time for what we had in the past, although it did not succeed, what was called the African Pure Peer Review Mechanism, which was abandoned along the way by these leaders. That needs to come back. We need to have conversations, difficult conversations need to happen among these leaders.
President Cyril Ramaphosa needs to, within provided diplomatic protocol, call out President Mnangagwa of Zimbabwe to say, ‘President, why are your police watching? And seemingly encouraging your citizens to cross into our country illegally, burdening our systems. We already have Swaziland that is paying, as well as Botswana, they are paying for services they come to South Africa. Whether it’s health services or education services, whatever services that they may need from us, their governments are paying.
And we believe that this should be done with everyone else. South Africa has a responsibility. Some of the other countries have often claimed that we are trying to play big brother.
Yes, we are big brother, we should play big brother. President Ramaphosa should not be ashamed of playing big brother, because big brother is the provider. It should be straightforward that “if I’m paying the bills, then I’m making the rules”.
In that context, our government should be able to call out disturbances that happen elsewhere on the continent that may result in serious disruption, ruining of lives and livelihoods, factors that we all know are driving this migration. But what we’re having currently, where now South Africa is being scapegoated, and this particular stance is not to say the vigilantism that the country is observing is correct. The government has rightly spoken out against this vigilantism and has issued clear instructions to the police to say, ‘if anybody breaks the law, arrest them’ including our own citizens who may go around harassing immigrants, whether those immigrants are in the country lawfully
or not.
Because we are a human rights orientated country, we cannot have bandits going around beating up people and dragging women with babies out of clinics on the basis that they are in the country unlawfully. However, this does not necessarily excuse the deplorable conduct of some of the governments on this continent that are failing their citizens on numerous fronts.
This is an opportunity for Ghana, for Nigeria to say, ‘but South Africa, how do you get it right? Because in Apartheid, the state only provided for a few, but now you have to provide for 66 million. How do you get it right? Please support us here. How can we maximize benefits on our minerals?
How can we govern better? How can we start delivering basic services to our people effectively? Help us achieve targets,’.
Those are the conversations that need to happen between leaders of these countries instead of Africans praying to become citizens of Canada or any other country. Unless we have those difficult conversations as Africans amongst ourselves, Africans will continue to try to run to other countries where they get to be treated like animals, when the continent is so resourceful and only requires better leadership, better governance.
