By Henry Akubuiro
The recent xenophobic attacks on the Nigerian beauty queen, Miss Chidinma Adetshina, in South Africa, where she was born and brought up, has called attention to the loss of fraternity among Africans. Hatred for black Africans, which was hitherto associated with North African Arabs, has been taken to a worse dimension by black South Africans within three decades of being a free nation.
Though xenophobia existed in South Africa before the 1994 return to majority rule, it has exacerbated in the post-Apartheid era with the flood of immigrants into the country from sub Saharan African, amid competitions for scarce resources.
In 2008, at least 62 people were killed in xenophobic attacks in the country and, in 2015, xenophobic attacks against immigrants prompted many African governments to begin repatriating their citizens. On 12 and 13 February, 2022, residents of Soweto and Alexandra marched to Hillbrow and Orange Grove areas to forcibly remove foreigners, accusing them of rising crimes, drug dealing and prostitution. High rates of unemployment and lack of economic opportunities for South African nationals were also cited as grievances by the group.
Fast forward to 2024, Nigerian beauty queen, Adetsina, was caught up in the web of identity crisis in South Africa, leading to xenophobia by black South Africans, who forced her to end her quest for Miss South Africa. It prompted Silverbird’s Guy Murray-Bruce, the national director of Miss Universe Nigeria, to invite her to join the Miss Universe Nigeria pageant. She was to win the Nigerian pageant in what appeared to be a diplomatic victory over xenophobia.
Before now, multi-genre, Nigerian writer, Chidubem Iweka, had written about this unfortunate subject in his 2022 collection of poems, Reflections of Hope, published by Kraft Books (Kraftgroits), in the poem entitled “Xenophobia”. The four-stanza poem decries the bastardisation of African unity by South African youths, who have not factored the struggle for the liberation of the continent by nationalists and activists. Hence: “Feel groaning and moaning of ancestors in turmoil/ Hear cities of long gone African patriots for futile toil/ Mourning in anguish of enslavement, blood and sorrow…”
The poem reminds all of the sacrifices of iconoclasts, like Patrice Lumumba and Nelson Mandela, to ensure the liberation of the black man from the shackles of colonialism and white supremacists. The poet is miffed that black Africans prayed, fasted that Mandela should be free while African musicians, poets and journalists chastised apartheid to free South Africa: “We all fought, suffered for a permanent end to Apartheid/Uphold dignity of Man of Colour from January to Yuletide/ So ‘ brothers’ in South Africa may break bonds of bondage/…. that Blacks from all nations may walk free in South Africa.” Saddened by the shedding of African blood, he poses the rhetorical question: “Where’s the sweat of Emeka Anyoku and Desmond Tutu?”
Iweka echoes the combined sacrifices of Africans, Americans and the West to ensure apartheid was a thing of the past. But black South Africans have today betrayed fellow Africans by murdering them for menial jobs. Thus: “What shame abounds on the motherly face of Mama Africa/ Africans killing Africans like in the ghettos of America”. The tone of anger revs up when the poet speaker says: “Woe betide any human, for flimsy reason kill another/…Woe betide who annihilates fellows for faith or religion…” For him, hell fire is the best place for these murderers.
Iweka’s “Xenophobia” is germane to the discourse on rebuilding Africa from derailment to fit into the dreams of its founding fathers. It is a call for action from every African to work towards achieving a long lasting African unity.