South Africans need to avoid our ethnic mistakes

When China informed us that 2019 was the year of the pig, few expected South Africa to take the game a little higher by creating a regional pigsty in downtown Johannesburg.

This past week, there have been torrents of physical violence meted out on foreigners down south.

While everyone has been waiting for the devil to claim responsibility for the mayhem, Nigerians already blamed jealousy (who couldn’t be reached for comment at the time of going to press).

Kenyans have been extremely vocal in their judgment of the violence in South Africa even though we cannot relate to what is happening there.

When it comes to dealing with people whose noses don’t look like ours, we are extremely charitable.

On the many occasions we have found foreign nationals roasting maize and peddling religious literature on the streets, Kenyans have demonstrated brotherly love by taking selfies with these hardworking foreigners and posting them online for Instagram likes.

CHARITABLE

Even the Nepalese strippers who were found pole-dancing in a Nairobi club were deported not because they took our non-existent jobs, but because we had rescued them from being victims of transnational human traffickers.

And we haven’t even asked to be thanked for it.

Kenya’s love for foreigners is so strong that our world-renowned man-eating lions let the Chinese pass a railway line through the Nairobi National Park without a roar, because the last time someone kidnapped a foreigner on Kenyan soil the Department of Defence unleashed stealth bombers to fumigate mosquito hideouts in Somalia – and our wild animals are wise enough not to be enemies of the state when they can avoid it.

If the Kenyan government protects foreigners like their life depends on it, it is because their life depends on it.

Had it not been for foreign nationals, our tourism industry would be travelling on its knees, Safaricom wouldn’t have been the most profitable company in the region, and Malindi residents would have met Italians only on television.

OPPORTUNITIES

Without the influence of foreigners, we wouldn’t be driving German cars, eating Pakistani rice, speaking English language, tailoring Ghanaian Kente, and dancing to Naija music.

Kenyans have been socialised to embrace foreign material regardless of the hazards that come with it.

We love foreigners so much that our MCAs would rather fly abroad to learn how to use an iPad than take the course at their nearest village polytechnic at a spartan cost.

If Kenya were to chase foreigners and their products out of our market, we would be left watching grainy pictures of Gor Mahia and AFC Leopards playing in the five world-class stadiums still on the Jubilee portal, and betting companies would have to start including the weather forecast in their bet slips to remain in business.

While South Africa cannot compete with us in bear-hugging foreigners, little can be said of our affinity for attacking our own.

TRIBALISM

Kenya might be 84 per cent Christian, but when it comes to choosing between a foreign god we have never seen and a tribal one who gives us handouts, we would not only kill for our tribal god but also burn the holy book if it comes between us and worldly comfort.

We are so polarised along tribal lines that if Jesus was to choose Kenya as his first stop for his second coming, he would be accused of belonging to a religious dynasty and crucified for supporting the handshake by telling us to love our enemies.

It was just the other day when village ruffians singing circumcision songs converted a church into a genocidal stove because members of a different tongue were seeking refuge in it.

They didn’t even bother to seek permission from God before defiling his house.

When we are not burning fellow Kenyans for tribal dominance, we are vandalising businesses whose owners bite their tongues differently.

ACT RIGHT

Some looters even went as far as negotiating with a windowpane when it refused to crack under a barrage of stones.

Given a chance, Kenyans would kill Kenya just to prove loyalty to their ethnic warlord. Just ask the Mau Forest, who heard someone say in a political rally that rain doesn't come from trees.

Kenyans are lecturing South Africans on xenophobia because we know how it feels to be the marking scheme of ethnic hatred.

And it isn’t a good place to be in. Neither would it be for them.

The writer comments on topical issues; [email protected]