Foreigners must go because they get jobs than the land owners said the Zulu king was a wrong, too fragile thing to say of a leader. He made a generational mistake. The South African citizens have committed a foul really too great to be accepted, their government illogical and non-future minded. Because of this, we have never stopped crying, the regret has never stopped. In a country partly born out of the 27 years imprisonment of Nelson Mandela, a man respected, helped and desired by the whole world, this foul is too great to be accepted.
This has reflected that South Africa has neglected the fact of how she was born and where she comes from but should have respected the love and the strive that shifted Nigerians to their shore. South Africa has no great concern about what we could all achieve, about what the future holds if we could live together. South Africa has quickly forgotten their history and hastily tears the page of brotherhood. To this their brutal nature, it means Mandela’s ideal even born out of great pain made no meaning to South Africa. How too soon do South Africa forget the moment of apartheid, how too soon do a country neglect her history resulting to an unacceptable brutality towards fellow African brothers. Indeed an absolute misbehavior of South Africa towards Nigeria in recent times even to xenophobic level.
Once upon a time
Lived a continent a united fabric
Innocent like the soaring eagle
Just a jump across the wall
Our indefinable crude quality
Garnished with chronic wickedness
Country firing their friends
Even when our feet are tired
A continent got fueled by blood
An unanswered cry
Africa shutting down
A hope yet found in South Africa
Xenophobia in South Africa
Sometimes, we want to defend Africa, we want to argue for Africa against the whole world that a hope yet found in the past Africa’s generation has been born. We want to say Africa has a new ideal and proper tenets but sometimes too this is difficult to do when an unexpected country misbehave not just against herself but against the fellow black brother, when a man chopped off the other guy’s head, cut off his ear, maimed him or get him blind all because he was a foreigner working hard. We all fought for apartheid but what exactly can we call this imbecilic idea? But yet when the South Africa’s idea is truly ill, I can still say Africa has grown quickly and well beyond the ideas of brutality the South still struggles with, something like xenophobia.
This behavior of South Africa has tutored us so many things, enough to bring out our machetes and riffles against the country but the brilliancy of a continent that I AM MY BROTHER’S KEEPER that they had turned down must be upheld here in Nigeria. What they had forgotten is that brotherhood is greater than our joint singular passion; it is a joint force of love and peace but how too soon they forget good behavior.
Many Nigerians could have desired a true retaliation born out of right passion. I understand that pain, I respect it because it is real, because it is true and because it is right but must not be executed for the principle of love to get it true meaning. South African jobs were not stolen; they were given out of free will to deserved and fitting Nigerians, a highly respected idea that South Africa is great till the power in the ill words of the Zulu king broke through our audacity that South Africa is exceptional.
Xenophobia for this occurrence is not perfect if it is a concentrated feeling of dislike, it would be accepted as a simple bad idea but also being the fear of people from other country, it is not. When South Africa has conquered has real fear, the white domino, is the fear of Nigerians on their shore quite a real one as well? There is nothing to fear in a black Nigerian foreigner that has lived with you without war or chaos in South Africa if not the fear of elders like the Zulu king that are still bent on breaking down a hopeful future Africa is struggling to build, announcing that love can’t take us anywhere great. This is not xenophobia, it is more than xenophobia, it is real brutality without a perfect explanation, a reopened sore of a continent, a generational mistake but we must be calm.
Nigerians must keep that ideal that riffle is not the best answer or hatred is an answer but true friendship and the world must know that our potentials are best achievable only through this. Hoping South Africa is still great enough to accept her mistakes and apologize.
Opabunmi Babatunde Adesokan.
I am the future spectacle
opabunmibabatunde@yahoo.com
07036528702
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