Friday Musings with Ayo Olukotun
“When your hosts begin to insinuate that the rough, almost inedible end of a yam tuber is all the food that they have left at home, then, the visitor should plan his exit without delay”
– Yoruba proverb
“Inflammatory headlines and negative stereotyping of other Africans by the South African media did not help matters. A sample would include: ‘Illegals in South Africa add to decay of cities, ‘Africa floods into Cape Town’, ‘six million migrants headed our way’”
–Presentation by Dr Olubunmi Akande, Durban University of Technology on Thursday, September 26, 2019.
As suggested by President Muhammadu Buhari’s ongoing visit to South Africa, the country is still very much in the traumatising and humbling wake of the recent xenophobic outburst in Nelson Madela’s country, resulting in the dislocation and journeying back home of hundreds of Nigerians. It was appropriate and topical, therefore, that a roundtable was held last week by the African Journal of International Affairs and Development, in collaboration with the Department of Politics and International Relations, of Lead City University, Ibadan, on the subject, in honour of one of its oldest and distinguished professors, Alaba Ogunsanwo, who turned 77 years earlier this year. Ogunsanwo had joined the university after his retirement from the University of Lagos 12 years ago, when he turned 65 years, and according to the institution’s Pro-Chancellor and Chairman of Council, Prof. Babajide Owoeye, had been a remarkable asset to the institution, role model scholar, whose modesty and simple lifestyle directly contradict his fame. On the panel of discussants were Prof. Olawale Albert, a former director of the Institute of Peace and Strategic Studies, University of Ibadan; Prof. Tunji Olaopa, Executive Vice-chairman of the Ibadan School of Government and Public Policy; Dr Akeem Amodu, an associate professor at the host university; Dr Olubunmi Akande, from the Durban University of Technology, South Africa, as well as this columnist.
Kick-starting the event, the head of department of Politics and International Relations, Dr Tunde Oseni, provided a rationale for the roundtable, in terms of the need to honour Ogunsanwo, and the imperative to provide policy remedies and initiatives for the issues of xenophobia and Afrophobia. Of course, analysis must precede prescription, therefore, it is important that egg-heads collate insights from the perspective of their respective disciplines. Lamenting the xenophobic and Afrophobic downturn in South Africa, Albert quoted a 2018 World Bank report which suggested that rather than being a drain on the economy, every immigrant worker in South Africa generated two jobs for South Africans, considering that their diverse skills set resulted in productivity gains and had multiplier effects for the economy. In other words, propaganda, hate speech and stereotypes have replaced sober analyses regarding the actual effect of immigration on the South African economy. That, of course, is only one side of the matter, because there is a seamy underside populated by criminals and immigrants with little or no skills, who had escaped their countries illegally, in order to forage for a living. Albert, while maintaining that discourse on the subject has been dominated by this underside, which are a minority of the immigrant population, went on to provide disturbing statistics about Nigerian immigrants in that country. For example, 10,000 Nigerians are reportedly trapped in South African prisons; 40,000 have been convicted for stealing, drugs, human trafficking and visa racketeering, while 6,000 other Nigerians are awaiting trial for other offences. So, it would appear that the negative and horrible impact of Nigerians engaged in crime, created the stereotypes, embellished by politicians and the media, giving rise to xenophobia and Afrophobia. Rummaging for solutions, Albert underpins the imperative of the African Union, which, he insists, should not only condemn the outrage, but should convene a special summit, to come up with policy guidelines.
The insights provided in the two quotations in the opening paragraph, concerns the need for early warning systems and possible deterrents against xenophobic media attacks on foreigners. This brings us to the paper by Olaopa, which makes a distinction between xenophobic violence and xenophobia, the latter being, “an attitudinal orientation of hostility against non-natives”, while the former speaks to specific acts of violence targeted at immigrants. Obviously, as the paper points out, the two are related because violence feeds on pre-existing hostility and relentlessly negative stereotyping in public discourse. One of the interesting reasons why Nigerians have been frequently targeted in the recurrent xenophobic attacks concerns, as Olaopa narrated it, the vanity and opulent lifestyles of Nigerians, and their being preferred by South African women, because they are big spenders. Predictably, this is an area that is difficult to capture by policy, but one can appeal to the good sense of Nigerian immigrants who succeed to be sensitive, for survival reasons, to the context and contestations of their new environment. Olaopa’s suggestions of better intelligence gathering, mapping out potential hotspots for attacks, the use of technology-based hotline systems and social media platforms, should reward further study by policymakers.
Of interest is the paper by Dr Olubunmi Akande, who brings to bear on the subject, the perspective of her experience as a recent doctoral graduate from one of South African universities. For example, she indicates typical examples of xenophobic perception by South African workers such as, “They should go because we have no jobs. I may want to work for 150 Rands a day, but foreigners settle for 70 Rands a day”. There is also, she mentioned, the depiction in the media, of African immigrants as illegal, buttressed by the association of Nigerians with drug trafficking, Congolese with passport racketeering and smuggling. That is not all. A preexisting high crime rate means that there is a culture of violence in place, which ensures that prejudice easily turns to hate speech, and hate speech to direct violence. As panaceas, she suggested the increased commitment from the South African government to tackle underlying factors, and the need for other African governments to make their countries more habitable in order to stem the perennial exodus. Hopefully, Buhari may be able to extract commitments to more frontal remedial measures from President Cyril Ramaphosa; even at that, its implementation will depend on the see-saw and swings of political moods.
To underline this point, and as this columnist pointed out, politicians eternally bound to swings in the public mood, unsurprisingly, stoke xenophobic fires. The rising popularity of right-wing xenophobic parties, in Europe, is a pointer to the symbiosis between anti-immigrant sentiments and politicians’ handling or mishandling of the situation through demagoguery. There is a qualification, however, that when these right-wing parties become more acceptable and centrist, they tend to drop some of their more offensive rhetoric, by trading them for a broader insertion into the mainstream. The point to note, nonetheless, is that xenophobia and Afrophobia will not go away in a hurry, because they are amenable to politicisation.
To end on a positive note, let me refer to the formulation of Amodu, who envisages that the bonds of African brotherhood would be so stimulated by African leaders, under the AU, that instead of Afrophobia and xenophobia, we would be talking about Afrophilia and xenophilia, capturing thereby, a need to move beyond the current fractured mien to notions of African brotherhood and fraternity.
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