South Africa and Zen. (Asking for permission to wade into the ongoingdiscussion)

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Cornelius Hamelberg

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Sep 14, 2019, 1:31:27 PM9/14/19
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I’m writing in the name of Nkosi Sikelel' iAfrika - which mind you is NOT “the National Anthem of South Africa” - it sounds more like the OAU anthem...

I have saved this document under the title of South Africa and Zen. However, the Zen here is merely the transliterated phonetic abbreviation for xenophobia – a word that usually raises all kinds of kaleidoscopic spelling hallucination and nightmare problems for the dyslectic. Now you know why.

Over and above all of what you'll find down below, there’s Judaism’s teachings about the stranger – which of course raises all kinds of practical day-to-day questions about day-to-day life for the downtrodden Palestinian Arab strangers in the Gaza and West Bank territories (either down-trodden by others of their own kind or by other species) and for those whose scriptures are based on Christianity and Islam’s doctrines about the treatment of strangers, not to mention immigration laws in Fortress Europe and The New Fortress Europe, the Statute of Liberty, The New Colossus, the spectre of new immigration laws in Trump’s The United States of America, and with regard to any alleged xenophobia in Azania or in indigenous South Africa there’s the Sangoma traditions...

There are still those jugglers and clowns who take offence at my posting this quote that’s been attributed to Voltaire, “To find out who rules over you, simply find out who you are not allowed to criticize” – for which they imagine Cornelius Ignoramus must suffer some dire worldly consequences. But it doesn’t matter whatever worldly or unworldly consequences Cornelius Ignoramus was born to suffer or will suffer, for the simple reason that Cornelius Ignoramus knows who he is, where he is, where he is from and where he will always be, and there’s nothing that you can do about it. If unlike him you happen to be ambitious you can cage him, you might even want to crucify him while you are still alive but that will in no way change him. As Nobel Laureate once chimed and rhymed

“You might own guns and you might even own tanks
You might be somebody's landlord, you might even own banks...”

So, go ahead:

All this is happening in real life, in real-time and place. Yesterday, on the way to the airport to pick up my late brother’s Zimbabwean wife (a classic case, with parents from Cape Town, South Africa, she was born in Bulawayo to a Boer mother and Shona father – immigrated to the UK as a two-year-old) and her daughter, I got a call from my wonderful South African Brother Lefifi Tladi, and since I have been sending him and another South African brother Farofa, all the recent USA-Africa dialogue series brouhaha posting about xenophobia being meted fellow Africans from Nigeria - on friendly visits to South Africa which is Far away from Nigeria, naturally, we talked about the situation in South Africa – and if you’re on the lookout for roots or causes, the Nigerians situation in South Africa cannot be totally separated, isolated or divorced from the situation in Nigeria (where Nigerians have been killing fellow Nigerians since October 1960 when Nigeria gained Independence) because the Nigerian migrants to South Africa must answer the root question: why are they in South Africa? Probably, because like Keats “Naughty boy” he, she, they hope or hoped that the grass would be greener there, in South Africa, greener than the green green grass on the home-turf in Nigeria

So, let me wade into the already muddied waters to purify them some more :

We could begin to about this kind of xenophobia that I met when I arrived in Accra for the second time in my life, in January 1970 and had to change all the dollars that I had on me with my Yoruba brethren mostly Yoruba traders who were being deported en masse, from Busia’s Ghana. And then they say it was payback time in 1983 (I was back home in Sweden on leave then and didn’t witness first-hand Nigeria’s deportation of over a million Ghanaians

( Having granted myself permission I‘ll be getting into the nitty-gritty after the Sabbath, when I’ll have some pleasant and not so pleasant things to say, such as the fact that in today’s South Africa, Igbos have chased out Hausas from South Africa into Mozambique where they are now refugees...

(To be continued)  

Cornelius Hamelberg

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Sep 17, 2019, 5:39:52 AM9/17/19
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updated : 

Hugh Masekela : Bring It Back Home

About ten days ago Julius Malema begged for forgiveness from fellow Africans, for the wave of xenophobia that was passing over South Africa, like an unforgiving, evil wind. The ugly scenario has finally come to this diplomatic outcome, not a day too late : South Africa finally apologises to Nigeria.

However, South Africa issuing an official apology to Nigeria in and of itself does not eliminate the causes of what happened and the ugly mood is likely to persist no matter the number of well-meant apologies plus compensation to those most directly affected, if the root cause of xenophobia is not addressed. 

The root causes are not too difficult to imagine if we take a good look at South Africa  and consider some of the following:

Latest statistics on documented and undocumented immigrants in South Africa

In the absence of accurate statistics it can only be a wild guess that e.g. there are currently four million Zimbabweans living in South Africa. 

Can any of our local experts hazard a guess as to how many documented and undocumented law-abiding Nigerians live in South Africa, at the moment?

Whatever the conservative or exaggerated estimate we are served, we can only conclude that such a volume of immigration can add significantly to the army of the unemployed and can only exacerbate the acute housing shortage - which has been at the top of the ANC agenda since the good old days of Joe Slovo... (when he was Minister of Housing)

These two factors provide enough cause for resentment and xenophobia, tribalism and racism everywhere, including Europe: "They come in hordes to take our jobs, our houses, our women..."

Since the resentment being expressed towards some of South Africa’s immigrant guests is not causeless and is in fact, to some extent predictable, are there any reasonable viewpoints that can further explain what has happened?

Julius Malema is viewed as a visionary in some quarters, whilst a more practicable view is that he is a dreamer - dreamer before his time and should his dreams ever be fulfilled by having his own way when he advocates A South Africa without borders – that would only succeed in further exacerbating the unwanted foreign population invasion of South Africa – an unimaginable demographic nightmare for South Africa’s indigenous people. It would be the same nightmare scenario if the UK and the EU were to suddenly declare that no one on planet earth is an alien and that everybody from the four corners of the world was free to immigrate and stay permanently without any restrictions to enjoy the fruits of salvation. I suppose that at least half of Africa South of the Sahara would take the opportunity to flee poverty and maybe when 50% of North Africa and the Middle East would have successfully relocated to what was formerly Fortress Europe, EURABIA would be a fait accompli and The Gates of Vienna would never again be closed.

I recall these few lines from Shakespeare’s Coriolanus remonstrating,


“…………………………………………...till at length
Your ignorance, which finds not till it feels,
Making not reservation of yourselves,
Still your own foes, deliver you as most
Abated captives to some nation
That won you without blows!”

I imagine that with a mass exodus of Africans from Africa to Europe and the rest of the Wild West - that African countries depleted of their populations should provide e.g. Malthus’ China already bursting at the seams a good opportunity to move in, relocate their masses to fill the empty vacant places, move-something like half a billion of their people to Mother Africa, perhaps not an altogether bad idea for the neo-Afro-European wannabes

It is in my not so humble opinion commendable that South Africa is not in favour of any further settler colonisation - even as of now when an equitable, legal and just land re-distribution is still on the ANC’s backburner even though about 84% of South Africa’s landmass is still not in the hands of South Africa’s indigenous masses. So, what kind of people’s justice is that and why is Ramaphosa back-pedalling/ being so gradual about this very urgent matter?

Maybe, because Botswana has Africa's strongest currency – stronger than what remains South Africa’s beloved Krugerrand, Botswanans have not emigrated in great masses to graze on the pastures to be found just across their Southern border in spite of the heroic assistance given to the indigenous Black South African nation when it suffered immensely under Botha’s criminal Apartheid regime.

So, the question arises and it should be interesting to hear from those who claim that they are emigrating or have emigrated to South Africa with the sole or express purpose of helping South Africa ( and not merely with the sole aim of helping themselves to the opportunities that they believe South Africa offers them, to financially enrich themselves) : What is their agenda? How do they intend to do this helping? Of course, not very different from people from poverty-stricken Africa and elsewhere emigrating to Europe, to help further develop Europe. In both cases, they could be told, “Sorry, but we don't need your help” or they could be asked, just as Trump has a right to ask, “ Don’t you want to fix your own broken countries / broken currencies? “

If only such questions and answers were that simple.

The well-intentioned educators could plead that they would like to contribute to South Africa’s education agenda so that within five to ten years South Africa would have developed to the same educational status as Zimbabwe - one of the most literate countries in Africa – and brain drain or not, everybody agrees that education is the key to development.

The health sector could also benefit immensely with the right kind of qualified labour (there are said to be more Ethiopian doctors in any of the major US cities, than in the whole of Ethiopia!)

I have been made to understand that so many things have still not happened in South Africa: they have not changed the name of their country, they have not changed the name of their currency, they adopted the Krugerrand (adopted meaning that it’s not yours), they do not have a national anthem, up till now, they do not have a flag (the rainbow flag was a symbolic national unity flag of transition during the Mandela and de Klerk as V-p for five years, although de Klerk quit (after two years) thus nullifying the flags symbolism...

So many untoward things happening in South Africa, I am reliably informed that sleepy Joe and the Muslim missionaries are now running South Africa’s prison system..

Abdullah Ibrahim discography

The indestructible beat of Soweto

( to be continued)







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William Kachi

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Sep 18, 2019, 3:17:49 AM9/18/19
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It’s disheartening to see Africans expressing intolerance and xenophobia towards each other, especially when there is already so much of it happening in other places of the world. I had heard a little bit about animosity and the history of xenophobia between Nigerians and Ghanaians growing up. Such things as the fact that a popular travel bag is named “Ghana Must Go”. I didn’t know until reading this article that there were actually Ghanaians deported en masse from Nigeria and vice versa. If someone is willing to discuss more, that would be greatly appreciated.

Ibukunolu A Babajide

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Sep 18, 2019, 10:04:41 AM9/18/19
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Dear William Kachi,

During colonial times, there was a great freedom of movement between Sierra Leone Ghana and Nigeria and people exchanged ideas and residence in these places.  Work was easily gained and as long as you are educated and qualified you could get a job easily in any of these British west African states.

Ghana formerly the Gold Coast was very rich and soon became the centre of the action.  Music (highlife), with E T Mensah and the Nigerian bandleaders playing in Ghana, Bobby Benson, Victor Olaiya, and even Fela Anikulapo Kuti (then known as Fela Ransome-Kuti and his Kulalobitos) band played in Ghana.  Ideology was also grown in Ghana with Kwame Nkrumah as the hub and Nnamdi Azikiwe starting his newspaper the West Africa Pilot there.

Many Nigerians had settled in Ghana for over a hundred years when after Kwame Nkrumah was toppled, Dr.  Kofi Busia in 1969  asked all Nigerians to leave Ghana within 48 hours.  Many left without a pin.  In the 70's Nigeria's economy boomed from oil earnings during the Yum Kupur war between Egypt and the Arab world on one side and Israel on the other.  Many Ghanaians thronged to Nigeria to work as teachers gardeners and drivers.  When Alhaji Shehu Shagari took over in 1979 after the Murtala/Obasanjo regime, he also ordered Ghanaians to return to Ghana.  Many lost their property and the bag Ghana Must Go was coined as the majority of the Ghanaians packed their properties and clothes into such bags. 

Gabon and Ivory Coast have also expelled Nigerians in the past.  It is not new.

Cheers.

IBK


_________________________
Ibukunolu Alao Babajide (IBK)

AN ENGLISH NURSERY RHYME

The law locks up the man or woman

Who steals the goose from off the common

But leaves the greater villain loose

Who steals the common from off the goose

 

The law demands that we atone

When we take things that we do not own

But leaves the lords and ladies fine

Who take things that are yours and mine

 

The poor and wretched don’t escape

If they conspire the law to break

This must be so but they endure

Those who conspire to make the law

 

The law locks up the man or woman

Who steals the goose from off the common

And geese will still a common lack

Till they go and steal it back

 -        Anonymous (circa 1764)



On Wed, 18 Sep 2019 at 10:17, William Kachi <will...@gmail.com> wrote:
It’s disheartening to see Africans expressing intolerance and xenophobia towards each other, especially when there is already so much of it happening in other places of the world. I had heard a little bit about animosity and the history of xenophobia between Nigerians and Ghanaians growing up. Such things as the fact that a popular travel bag is named “Ghana Must Go”. I didn’t know until reading this article that there were actually Ghanaians deported en masse from Nigeria and vice versa. If someone is willing to discuss more, that would be greatly appreciated.

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Harrow, Kenneth

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Sep 18, 2019, 10:04:52 AM9/18/19
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you can goback to kourouma's Suns of Independence, to get a major novel's take on the xenophobic expulsion in cote d'ivoire, 50 years ago (or more)
ken

kenneth harrow

professor emeritus

dept of english

michigan state university

517 803-8839

har...@msu.edu

From: usaafric...@googlegroups.com <usaafric...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of William Kachi <will...@gmail.com>
Sent: Tuesday, September 17, 2019 4:00 PM
To: USA Africa Dialogue Series <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: USA Africa Dialogue Series - South Africa and Zen. (Asking for permission to wade into the ongoingdiscussion)
 
It’s disheartening to see Africans expressing intolerance and xenophobia towards each other, especially when there is already so much of it happening in other places of the world. I had heard a little bit about animosity and the history of xenophobia between Nigerians and Ghanaians growing up. Such things as the fact that a popular travel bag is named “Ghana Must Go”. I didn’t know until reading this article that there were actually Ghanaians deported en masse from Nigeria and vice versa. If someone is willing to discuss more, that would be greatly appreciated.

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Cornelius Hamelberg

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Sep 18, 2019, 6:03:27 PM9/18/19
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William Kachi,

Xenophobia is truly worrisome, because in most places somebody ( some earthling) is always going to be a stranger...

With regard to South Africa – let's pay attention to what Naledi Pandor had to say in today’s BBC Hardtalk

With regard to “Ghanaians deported en masse from Nigeria and vice versa.” - perhaps, we had better leave that to some of the Bible-thumping Ghanaians in our midst - such as Wofa Akwasi to embroider on Leviticus 19:18 where HASHEM the Almighty commanded, And You Shall Love Your Neighbor as Yourself - I Am the Lord !

I have never experienced xenophobia personally anywhere in Africa. I have experienced negative tribalism in Sierra Leone, but not in Ghana and Nigeria where people are hospitable in the extreme and where I lived like an indigene for a total of 54 (fifty-four) months.

In Sweden where I have lived most of my life one aspect of it ( xenophobia and racism) is subtle, more atmospheric, has its cultural and language codes and is referred to as the Law of Jante, which is gradually falling into desuetude now, but is essentially still there and sufficiently still in practice to make even Cornelius Ignoramus who likes eating humble pie to start feeling sorry for himself.

These are the ten laws:

  1. Don’t think you are anything special.

  2. Don’t think you are as good as we are.

  3. Don’t think you are smarter than we are.

  4. Don’t imagine yourself better than we are.

  5. Don’t think you know more than we do.

  6. Don’t think you are more important than we are.

  7. Don’t think you are good at anything.

  8. You're not to laugh at us.

  9. Don’t think anyone cares about you.

  10. Don’t to think you can teach us anything.

We need a wide-angle lens to capture the big problem of Xenophobia in Africa and everywhere else.

Consider Kennedy Emetulu’s reasoning when exhorting his fellow Africans in The UK to vote for the remain option in the Brexit referendum.

There’s much that I can say about xenophobia in Europe where as far as the racists and fascists are concerned, we Africans belong to the same despised category, as Richard Pryor joked, one tribe: Niggers! ( At least abroad, Africans are united against racism under that common banner) 

Africa’s current problems, poverty, underdevelopment, lack of electricity, corruption, Ebola, Boko Haram etc. is causing the mass exodus from Africa and the desperate journeys with many people drowning in the Mediterranean Sea on their way to what they hope will be a better life in Europe.

I was going to give you the latest example of racism from my own personal experience - and this occurred on Saturday, 14th of September 2019 at about 2300hrs, but for the time being I’m still giving the guys in question a slight benefit of the doubt, because they had been drinking – otherwise, they all qualify for execution by firing squad or some powerful voodoo, but they still don’t understand and I’m not going to put out a contract on them. Some of them are so self-confident and full of themselves that they don’t even danger even when they are standing right next to it. Late one night, on our way to somewhere,  my late South African friend took out his pistol right there at the tube station at Östermalmstorg station and shoved it into the mouth of a toubab who had shouted out to us  "niggers" as if that was our collective surname,   - well my friend  pushed the toubab up against the wall, shoved his enormous pistol into the guy's mouth (he was VERY angry) and told him, “ My friend, just say "nigger" one more time and you will cause me to pull the trigger!” I intuited that he was going to pull the trigger anyway and  blood was going to be splattered on us and all over the place, but the  cowardly Negrophobist was so scared about what was about to happen to him that he completely wet his trousers. This early was in 1985. Some people still don't know what time it is. It was something like this: “I dare you, I double dare you!” except that with the weapon loaded and inserted right inside the Afrophobe's mouth, the end of the matter was that the son of a bitch wet his pants and we continued on our way.

Even posthumously we can maybe dream along with Utopian John Lennon and Imagine  life on an ideal planet earth spinning in vast space. What we do know is that racism combined with what to some extent what we ordinarily define as negative tribalism can go hand in glove with xenophobia, worst-case scenario, producing the sort of genocidal tragedy that occurred in Rwanda. Sometimes, the xenophobia can be perpetrated by colonialist foreigners targeting you in your own country, such as the Herero and Namaqua genocide also known as the German genocide in the then German South-West Africa now known as Namibia and as also occurred in the then Belgian Congo...

The racism that animated their genocidal pathology was there for their fellow countrymen to see in this shameful extended episode of a little African girl being exhibited like an animal in a Belgian zoo in 1958

Nigeria : Tribalism

Xenophobia was exacerbated by the racism and tribalism disease being further polluted by a mega-dose of anti-Semitism directed by Hitler at the exogenous target group of European Jews – including German Jewry / Jews who were German citizens – including those who were culturally German. The horrific result was the Shoah.

Anti-Semitism is once again on the rise in Europe - is also on the rise in Sweden and is a matter of great concern. 

Because we say “Never Again!” we must work to ensure that that sort of tragic history does not repeat itself.

Islamophobia is sometimes now being defined as “the new anti-Semitism.” That is of course debatable – it has no similarity to or affinity with the dogmas of replacement theology (the erroneous belief that the Almighty HASHEM has an only begotten son, that was born by the Virgin Mary and that only those who follow His son Jesus are His chosen people/ the real/ true Israel.  I suppose that some of the fanatical Muslims believe that they have replaced both the Jews and the Christians as the Almighty’s only rightly-guided - so you probably sympathize with the lyrical contents of Tom Lehrer’s National Brotherhood Week...

But, more seriously, it’s not as if the Arabs or Muslims have replaced the Jews as hate objects throughout Europe - indeed a good number of Muslims both in Europe and wherever it is that they originally come from can be clinically tested and emerge with flying colours as bonafide anti-Semites who religiously hate the children of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in the name of Allah – likewise there is a good number of Jews that I know to be unapologetically wanton Islamophobes, just utter these three words, say “the poor Palestinians” and some of them will tell you to your face that you have become an “anti-Semite”. There is no escape, either way, you lose.

If we can address the problem of the brain-drain from Africa to the West we will be well on our way to solving all the other problems currently bedevilling Africa.

Of absolute relevance :Ibram Kendi


On Wed, 18 Sep 2019 at 09:17, William Kachi <will...@gmail.com> wrote:
It’s disheartening to see Africans expressing intolerance and xenophobia towards each other, especially when there is already so much of it happening in other places of the world. I had heard a little bit about animosity and the history of xenophobia between Nigerians and Ghanaians growing up. Such things as the fact that a popular travel bag is named “Ghana Must Go”. I didn’t know until reading this article that there were actually Ghanaians deported en masse from Nigeria and vice versa. If someone is willing to discuss more, that would be greatly appreciated.

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Cornelius Hamelberg

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Sep 19, 2019, 7:49:21 AM9/19/19
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Correction. Should read, 

" Some of them are so self-confident and full of themselves that they don't  sense danger even when they are standing right next to it." 
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