Connect with us

Global Issues

Xenophobia: A Quick Rejection of Communalism -By Idowu Odeyemi

It is due to the failure of a government to provide employments that make its citizen seek for greener pasture.

Published

on

Xenophobia in South Africa

Africans have a lot to fight already. Bad leaders, patriarchy, rape culture, bad music, racism, mental slavery, conceptual colonialism, misplaced languages, western domination of African countries economics, transformation of agricultural lands to houses for private use, climate change, westernize identity(no more African identity), corruption, sex trafficking, child trafficking and many other things, just to mention few, are there for Africans to fight. However, upon all this diabolic concepts, what Africans choose to fight is nothing but themselves.

Xenophobia is endemic to South Africa, but the reports are not as rampant as we see now on our social medium and TV stations or hear on radio stations today. And this is just the underlying truth about Africans: they don’t take lymphoma cancer serious unless the doctor informs them that it will kill them within the next six months. Lymphoma is cancer that begins in infection-fighting cells of the immune system, called lymphocytes. These cells are in the lymph nodes, spleen, thymus, bone marrow, and other parts of the body. When you have lymphoma, lymphocytes change and grow out of control. Lymphoma cancer is infectious not contentious. And so because it is infectious and not contentious, African immigrants that do not live in South Africa thinks it is left unto the ones who had existentially opt for South Africa as a place to live to kick against these attacks that are xenophobic. Africans did not know this lymphoma cancer would affect the remaining cells. Now Africans are shouting and burning. Nigerians most especially.  South Africans lynch Nigerians based on being too productive. The South Africans argument is that “you are excelling too much on another man’s land and you are not afraid of excelling more than the man that accommodates you”. You see, the agitations of this insane-xenophobes can be put in this armpit: a landlord and a tenant. The landlord who stopped working because he has built a house is angry that one of his tenants is decorating his house to look better. This anger indicates just one thing: pre-logicality.

Advertisement

After hearing the NEWS about xenophobic attacks in South Africa, one thing that came to one’s mind is affirmative. This affirmation goes within the reasons some philosophic minds lied down as reasons for the assertion that ‘there was and there is’ an African philosophy. African philosophy did not become a conscious and attractive course until we start reading G.W.F Hegel, Immanuel Kant, Levy Bruhl, among others. All these philosophers affirmed the proposition that “Africans cannot think”  or as Hegel will put it, “Africans have not attain full consciousness like their western counterparts”. Thou this kind of affirmation breathe ignorance, without the option of romanticizing Afrocentricism, one cannot deny that there is an iota of truth in the affirmations of these great philosophers.

Speculatively, Africa is the poorest continent on earth –low electricity, flood, poor pure water, poor education, but fanatically religious. Poorest continent and we are lynching each other because of excelling.

(I will go on from here, using Nigeria as my subject.)

Advertisement

The proposition that affirmed that Africans are not thinking can be justified with what they choose. By ‘what’, I mean the political leaders they choose. It is a fact that democracy is the system in practice during electoral periods in Nigeria. Thou, it is reflectively true that the people who have power and money, and are contesting for political offices, manipulates these elections through their monies. We still yet cannot subtract that revolutionary act is always productive.  In order not to digress, Nigerians in south Africa enjoy this xenophobic attacks most, and all the president of the country could do is to tweet a meaningless statement, telling the public he is sending some funny fellows to meet with the president of South Africa by October. In other words, the political leaders led by the president are telling the citizens of the precious country that “our children are not there and if they are there, they are under strong protection and the southern Africa people can burn Nigerians till November.

The fallibilities of the president of Nigeria during his first tenure are enough for Nigerians to boycott his thumb-printing space during the general elections, but Nigerians believe in second chances because even Jesus, they say, have given us all a second chance to be born again and receive salvation.

In novels that has its settings in traditional African societies, the ideas that are projected into the brain of the readers is that African societies are ‘communalistic’, that is Africans cohere with each other peacefully in the society. But this communalism that is projected is not veracious. In other words, it is ruse and not true. If unity (brotherhood) is endemic to African societies, then why do Africans trade each other, into slavery during colonialism, for gun powders and learning of the English language? Trading each other into slavery is the old way of rejecting communalism. Xenophobia is the new means of rejecting the austere message of communalism!

Advertisement

Xenophobia has no defense, whatsoever. It is pre-logical, counterproductive, prejudicial and stupidly hilarious when one considers the many problems Africa have. Nigerians have since react to these xenophobic attacks in South Africa by destroying and burning down shops, enterprises, businesses own by South Africans. This rigid reaction will not just put the South Africans that own a business here out of business, it will cost my brother Segun his job, it will cause aunty Ifeanyi her job at the MTN customer care line. We will be hungry for another five years, because it takes that much years or more to find a job that feed the stomach in Nigeria. Nigerians in their own tactless way of fighting for their own people are lynching my stomach and stopping my sister and I’s education. Who will pay my school fees if auntie Ifeanyi’s appointment is terminated?

It is due to the failure of a government to provide employments that make its citizen seek for greener pasture. It is due to the failure of the government to provide good and quality education that makes its citizen to lynch other human beings. The government’s failure to provide tight security is the reason xenophobic attacks can be carried out. It is due to lack of sense that allows a society to believe some part of the world belongs to them. It is due to the failure of every individual that we have governments that are always failing.

Africans are hypocrites! We have lie to the world, through papers, that we are our brothers keeper; that we are because you are! We have lie to the world that X is because we are! We have lie that we are communalistic! We are xenophobes! We are sick, mentally!

Advertisement

Advertisement

Continue Reading
Advertisement
1 Comment

1 Comment

  1. Pythagoras

    September 3, 2019 at 11:35 pm

    Nigeria, I will say, is the worst part of all these laid down pitfall problems. South Africa cannot try this with some African countries cos they (other African countries) have a better government to fight for them unlike Nigeria where Citizen are living in the cages of political illiteracy. Nigeria is a country that accommodates arrant nonsense most especially when it comes to an attack like this. Put concisely, we are the most weaker-cells. I will vividly say President. Buhari is the most foolish and worst president in the history of Nigeria, agitated for the post just for him to be traveling around.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Facebook

Trending Articles