SA’s democracy might not have existed today without the sacrifices and support of African states and their citizens who supported the Pan-Africanist ideals of a free and united Africa. Ideals that were pushed by the then Organisation of African Unity (OAU), later named the African Union (AU).
Africa Day is a celebration of the formation of the AU, which was founded on 25 May 1963. The political and financial support that the OAU extended to South Africans resisting apartheid differed with the changing tides of the struggle.
When the apartheid police were violently crushing student resistance in the 1970s, many fled to different African countries, where the OAU funded their stay. They did the same to support the rise of the armed struggle; uMkhonto weSizwe soldiers were assisted by the OAU, especially when it came to living expenses while in exile.
They also threw a lot of their efforts into international lobbying for the liberation of SA. Influential figure in the formation of the OAU, post-independence Ghanian leader and scholar Kwame Nkrumah, said: “The independence of Ghana is meaningless unless it is linked up with the total liberation of the continent.”
The OAU maintained this outlook for decades, with SA being one of the last African states to gain freedom in 1994, where most gained their freedom from colonial rule between the 1950s and 1970s. There is a long history of how the OAU and various African states fought for our freedom as black South Africans, a history so long that this brief overview does not even begin to illustrate the depth of the solidarity we received from different African countries.
The xenophobic SA we find ourselves in today is a huge betrayal of the work and sacrifices of leaders such as Nkrumah and the citizens who backed his dreams of a united and liberated Africa. The colonial governments left many social challenges, and it was not uncommon for them to purposefully destroy infrastructure as they left the colonies.
When we fight for a SA that exists in silos from the rest of the African continent and question the mobility that once existed before the drawing up of colonial borders, then we allow the goals of our colonisers to continue to live and encumber us.
South Africans are starting to see themselves as the ‘better blacks’ based on oppressive racist reasoning such as colourism, where lighter is perceived as better. We see ourselves as ‘better blacks’ because of our aspirations to be ‘white adjacent’, sounding white, mastering Western culture, looking white, conquering Western languages, etc.
In his discussion of Frantz Fanon’s psychoanalysis on blackness, philosopher Kwame Anthony Appiah said: “Black children raised within the racist cultural assumptions of the colonial system, can partially resolve the tension between contempt for blackness and their own dark skins by coming to think of themselves, in some sense, as white.”
Another dangerous dimension is ‘tribalism’ – if you can’t or don’t adequately assimilate to South African culture or speak the languages because you are an ‘outsider’, then you are victimised or further excluded. Drawing comparisons between xenophobic SA and the Rwandan genocide can be helpful. The genocide is one of the most dangerous illustrations of what happens when these two systems of oppression come together.
SA’s frequent violent xenophobic outbursts are not too far removed from the Rwandan history. The emergence of violent groups such as Operation Dudula is reminiscent of the anti-Tutsi propaganda that Hutus spread through radio in Rwanda before and during the genocide.
Often South Africans end up also being attacked in the process, because the idea that South Africans do not have dark hues is a false social construct. Like Rwandans, we are uncritical of dangerous black constructs created by whiteness.
We scapegoat the challenges created by colonialism and apartheid and which our government fails to adequately address. We blame our poverty, rising unemployment, and other social ills on African immigrants.
This goes against the Pan-Africanist dreams of important leaders like Nkrumah, while distracting us from the problems that really matter, such as land, the economy, access to dignified work, health care, education, etc.
• Shange is a lecturer in the department of sociology at the University of the Free State
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