There are three things we need to revisit to have an informed discussion about the incident concerning the remarks made by the Limpopo MEC of health last week – and what then needs to be done to resolve the matter in a productive manner.
First, the struggle for the liberation of SA would not have been possible without the support of many different African countries. Innocent people died in Lesotho, Zambia, Zimbabwe and Mozambique, to mention a few, dying in defence of the SA Struggle for freedom.
Second, when SA obtained its freedom – it crafted a foreign policy strategy embedded on international solidarity with every progressive nation and region that supported its anti-apartheid Struggle. It also prioritised the development of Africa given the anti-colonial credentials that the ANC shares with the rest of the liberation movements across the continent.
In fact, the 1912 formation of the ANC was based on the mission to unite all Africans across different languages, kingdoms and nations, regions and religions to resist colonial invasion and dispossession.
Third, the collapse of colonial regimes across Africa between the late 1950s and early 1990s left the continent with uneven levels of development.
This also included highly distorted and fragmented communities and borders, which made the post-colonial project of democratisation, development and decolonisation difficult to achieve.
With these three important aspects in mind, the leadership of the whole continent found itself faced with mounting challenges that continue to manifest themselves in small pockets of outbursts as seen recently by Limpopo health MEC Phophi Ramathuba.
Here is a summary of three challenges behind the MEC’s remarks.
First, the destruction caused by colonialism and apartheid across Africa left SA relatively better off compared with all its neighbours. The 1994 democratic government of SA began its development from an infrastructural foundation that was cemented by the apartheid state.
Whites stayed in SA for over three centuries before 1994 and the ANC government implemented liberal economic policies that further accelerated the apartheid economy into the democratic state. This further industrialised SA to a point where it became an economic powerhouse island of opportunities surrounded by a sea of poverty from the rest of the countries in the continent.
Second, SA’s post-1994 economic boom attracted a big number of foreigners into SA from the African continent and from around the world. All these foreign people came to SA for the same purpose – to benefit from the economy and establish livelihoods for themselves. Our liberal constitution and advanced Bill of Rights allowed this free movement of people in and out of our country.
Third, SA tried to control this foreign influx of people to its shores through diplomatic relations and international solidarity work. For instance, the emphasis of Mbeki’s African renaissance programme was to ensure that each African country gets to have its own democracy and a thriving economy in order to keep its citizens in its own country.
In other words, if Zimbabwe is stable, peaceful, democratic, and full of economic opportunities – then Zimbabweans will stay in Zimbabwe and see no need to migrate to a SA that has similar opportunities as their Zimbabwe.
Wars, unelected regimes, terrorist attacks, corrupt elites, exploitation, and politicians who stay in power for over 30 years are ingredients for destruction – which will have dire consequences for SA and the continent.
This was at the core of SA foreign policy. This is why the participation of SA in peace and stability accords of the continent was a priority to Mbeki and Mandela. They understood Africa. They were trained in Africa. They fully grasped what the ANC is all about and its foundation mission in Africa.
Today, that language has disappeared from the ANC and its government. The mission to develop Africa as a defence of SA no longer consists the basic training of ANC leaders in government. That’s why they are clueless. That’s why they resort to populist statements like the one made by the MEC.
The most productive intervention to address the crisis of foreign traffic into SA is to tackle the design of the uneven legacy economy inherited from colonial empires that continues to haunt Southern Africa and strengthen the work of enforcing good governance and democratisation on all dictatorship regimes that continue to capture Africa and alienate its people to flee into SA.
That is the difficult job responsible leaders are supposed to do. There is no shortcut out of this crisis and shooting from the hip won’t help either. If anything, lazy leaders like the MEC must be viewed as irritations that must not be tolerated by those who are doing real work to transform this continent for the better.
Dr Mzileni is a research associate in the faculty of humanities at Nelson Mandela University
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