Are Africans fated to be victims of racism, xenophobia forever?

Throughout history, mankind has been afflicted by all kinds of calamities, ranging from wars, starvation, floods, infernos and disease.

He has always survived, but one thing has endured — his intolerance to and hatred of fellow men due to differences in pigmentation, culture, traditions, religious beliefs and politics, which contrive to set an individual against another or a group with similar prejudices against another.

The difference between the former and the latter is that prejudice, racism and xenophobia are generally man-made and have no basis in science.

Add tribalism to this mix and you have a rich concoction with which human beings have learnt to define themselves.

The wonder is that we have not annihilated one another so far.

RACISM
In the past two months, a few episodes have served to reinforce the belief that people are incapable of co-existence unless they speak the same language, wear similar clothes, live in the same neighbourhood, attend the same church, and go through the same traditional rituals that makes them “civilised”, hence different from wild beasts.

Let us start with racism. This condition is defined as a “belief that a particular race is superior or inferior to another, and that a person’s social and moral traits are predetermined by his or her inborn biological characteristics”.

In this respect, hatred against fellow human beings is justified on the grounds that the other person is ‘sub-human’ due to his skin colour, language, customs, place of birth, and economic status.

As a result, some races seem to be predisposed to exploitation or even enslavement by supposedly superior races.

This where Africans come in, for over time, they have borne the brunt of racism.

SLAVERY IN LIBYA

Their worst experience, besides the slave trade and slavery, of course, was the Apartheid system or institutionalised racism in South Africa, which was perpetuated by a minority race for three decades, though subjugation and bigotry against Africans had gone on unabated for close to two centuries.

Earlier this week, it was reported that non-Arabic immigrants are being enslaved in Libya as they try to cross into Europe.

They are trafficked by international criminals, then sold in markets for as little as Sh20,000.

I do not sympathise with the poor fellows who immigrate for economic reasons, but my heart goes out to those fleeing wars or pogroms in their own countries.

What is baffling is why we, black Africans, should be equally heartless to our brothers and sisters.

XENOPHOBIA

Since 2008, there have been sporadic outbreaks of xenophobia in South Africa.

This country has known nothing but trouble for generations and one would have thought that its citizens could never contemplate discriminating against and even killing fellow Africans.

But in 2008, at least 62 foreigners were killed in the country’s townships.

Most of them were petty traders and small shopkeepers, but they were profiled as incorrigible criminals whose only interest was to take jobs away from the citizens.

The same thing happened six years later, and is happening this year, too.

But the Pretoria government is in complete denial, describing the attacks as ordinary crimes, which means there is no political will to deal with it.

The one thing common with both racism and xenophobia is that these hate crimes are committed against soft targets — people who cannot defend themselves, and who have no ready recourse to justice.

South Africa is an economic giant, but the gap between the poor and the rich has never really been bridged.

As a result, the citizens take it out on hapless immigrants, knowing full well that most of the country’s enormous wealth is still being controlled by whites.

****
I don’t know about you, but methinks Nasa co-principals Kalonzo Musyoka and Musalia Mudavadi do protest too much.

For some reason, they do not seem to be in sync with their most ardent supporters who insist that their man must become the presidential flag-bearer, or else.

The fact is, practically every other day, one or the other is out there denying they intend to bolt from Nasa should they not be picked to clobber Jubilee.

Since they know very well that they can’t hack it on their own, why can’t they give us a break?

This kind of thing can become quite confusing and boring. What Kenyans want to know is who will be the Nasa presidential contender.

All these other things are beside the point.

[email protected]