Xenophobia: Most African leaders shedding crocodile tears

South Africa has of lately hosted Xenophobia, which is simply the horrific showcase of human hatred which has been characterised by a disturbing intolerance of other human beings, even of one’s own neighbours.

This shameless public display of dislike for foreigners, especially of fellow Africans has resulted in the maiming and killing of people as well as in the looting of goods at the expense of revenue and national reputation for a country often referred to as the Rainbow Nation.

These sickening developments have received international condemnation from all continents of the world, with various countries and individuals threatening to ban business and personal interaction with South African nationals and their companies as an expression of displeasure.

As such, various people have timeously used differentplatforms to register their frustration, concern and condemnation on the perpetrators of such animalistic behaviour as well as on the South African government for failing to prevent and contain the situation.

A number of accusations, counter accusations and theories have been exchanged on the probable and actual reasons that triggered this unfortunate and shameful development which shall always be imprinted in the books of the history of humanity.

After all this blame game on the South African government and its nationals has been done and while tears are still on our cheeks, there is now a need to cast the net wide and then identify other subtle contributors to this mayhem.

A systemic and systematic analysis of these xenophobiaattacks can clearly show that hatred for other human beings is even rampant and nastier in various African countries that hypocritically played victim in this regard.

Quite a number of the people who succumbed to these xenophobic attacks were actually experiencing a repeat of what they had actually faced in their own countries because of hatred and intolerance which destabilizesthose who are termed as opposition elements.

There is still a shocking but deliberate failure by political leaders in Africa to acknowledge and appreciate that people can peacefully co-exist in the same environment even though these people may have different opinions regarding certain political and religiousissues in life.

So basically the real causes of what ends up as xenophobia is something that we can for the first time term as CRIT-OPPO-PHOBIA by which we mean the hatred for criticism and opposition or hatred for anything different in any regard whether good or bad.

This hatred which is in most cases politically or religiously inspired by unscrupulous societal leaders generally blinkers people from seeing opportunities because of lack of open-mindedness which then unfortunately undermines cooperation and promotes instability.

Such primitive and shameful intolerance is then what causes innocent people to end up suffering the double tragedy of being victimized at home and in the foreign lands that they escape to in search of safety and employment while running away from their own lands. In most African states, people are maimed and killed while goods are looted in the same way as what happened in South Africa for just having and supporting a different political or religious opinion.

The only difference in this case is that these people in South Africa suffered this brutal fate in a foreign land.

What the victims of xenophobia succumbed to in South Africa is not a foreign development in the eyes of most African political leaders who perpetrate the same barbaric acts on their own citizens who then risk their own lives and brave for the unknown in foreign lands.

Ordinary citizens who ended up clashing, fighting, chasing and killing each other in the streets of South Africa recently are actually both mutual victims of primitive political administrative philosophies that are being adopted with impunity in Africa.

Those who were manipulated into engaging in these xenophobic attacks could actually have opted to work together with these foreigners and come up with ground breaking business initiatives since some of these foreigners are educated and experienced professionals in their own regard.

However, unfortunately, they never thought of that because of political manipulation since it is actually a fact that it is easy to manipulate and arouse the tempers of economically desperate people into being heartless extremists who do not have any respect for human life.

The fact that these marauding South Africans did not vent their anger on employers and the government actually points to the existence of a powerful political hand that operated in the background but which was just devilishly smart enough to manipulate others.

Such has become the unfortunate norm of African politics which is premised on making sure that mutual victims of government failure end up on each other’s throat while the real culprits of people’s unfortunate reality always walk free.

Brian Kazungu is a Media Practitioner, Entrepreneur and an Opinion Leader.