President Nelson Chamisa’s statement on the situation in South Africa
Source: We must build a new Africa! – The Zimbabwean
The attacks against fellow Africans in South Africa are appalling and heartbreaking. We call upon our African brothers and sisters to show a full sense of brotherhood and sisterhood consistent with the timeless wisdom of Ubuntu. Brother against brother or Sister against sister is inimical to Ubuntu.
Extremely disturbing are scenes and sights of violence and horrendous attacks in South Africa. It is time to take decisive action to protect all in South Africa and stop any attacks on fellow Africans. Priority must be given to individual security & stopping of all manner and forms of violence.
these attacks are routinely described as xenophobic, it is evident that they target black Africans. These are deliberate and systematic attacks based on race and country of origin rather than foreignness alone. The resulting conflict is terrible for our communities because they foment hatred and tensions between people. We need to correctly characterise what is happening in South Africa not as xenophobia but as Afrophobia, as the attacks are not necessarily against foreigners but against fellow black Africans.
The irony is on why an African should be Afrophobic. True, we need to solve the challenges in fellow African countries that have led to many leaving their own countries but the irony remains that Africans would feel unwelcome both in Europe as well as in a fellow African State. If Africans are unsafe in Africa, where else should they go?
While we acknowledge that South Africa, like many other African countries has problems of inequality, joblessness, social service delivery, poverty and illegal immigration. Violence and impunity is not the answer to these problems.
If we allow violence and brutality in society to be used as an instrument to resolve challenges, it inevitably spreads to all facets of life including affecting women and children. Violence in all its ugly forms and manifestations, be it towards women and children, citizens, illegal immigrants or any other human being for that matter is simply unacceptable.
As Africans we need as a matter of urgency to stop violence against each other.
They vote with their feet, seeking greener pastures. Yet there, they find hell as they clash with equally vulnerable and happiness-seeking locals. It becomes a running battle between the poor. We can solve this by fixing our messy politics.
This is why we find it incredulous when our brother leaders in the region look aside when our government brutalises citizens. Where do the oppressed go? To the neighbours. That is why we have always said Zimbabwe’s problems are also our neighbours’ domestic challenges.
Illegal immigration is a product of nurturing dictatorship in our neighbourhoods.
Time has now come to think seriously about the New Africa we deserve. We must collectively, as Africans, examine critically the utility of maintaining colonial boundaries and borders which give a false sense of division and exceptionalism. The divisions made in Berlin more than 100 years ago still divide us. We need a post-Berlin conference African consensus to shape a New Africa to the satisfaction of our ideals, imaginations, hopes and aspirations.
In the long run, Africa should move towards removing colonial borders, having one passport and establishing a single currency and a single market. We must build our internet exchange points, continent-wide television networks, proper road, rail and flight links. We have started well ith a continental free trade area. We dare do more!
We urgently need A New Africa where African brotherhood is the common denominator. A New Africa where the African Union plays a more dynamic role in solving African problems and is at the forefront of pushing the African youth development agenda.
A better tomorrow and a NEW AFRICA does not just happen, it must be designed and now is the time to build on these fundamentals and construct: The Africa We want and deserve.
Our dear South African brothers and sisters, we appreciate your being tired of those you estimate to be foreign, but please help us lobby for intervention of SADC and South Africa to fix Zimbabwe’s politics by helping Zimbabweans resolve the legitimacy and governance crisis caused by the disputed July 2018 Presidential election and on-going poor performance.
When Zimbabwe was stable and thriving we never had these problems of illegal immigration. In fact our South African brothers and sisters were coming to Zimbabwe to seek refuge from apartheid, to learn and do business. That’s the way it should be.
Fixing Zimbabwe will reduce South Africa’s problems. Fixing Zimbabwe will restore its citizens’ dignity and hope. Similarly fixing Somalia, DRC and Nigeria, among other countries, will go a long way in stabilizing Africa and reducing the problem of tensions and hate.
So many people died to free Africa. We can’t have more people dying in a free Africa.
I appeal to President Cyril Ramaphosa and South Africa to help Zimbabweans help themselves through a credible and genuine political dialogue to put in place transitional mechanism that will pave way for comprehensive political and economic reforms, a lasting solution to returning Zimbabwe to freedom, legitimacy and democracy.
To our leaders and fellow citizens of SADC, when any country sneezes the whole region catches a cold. A sick and weak Zimbabwe will always be an albatross around the necks of all the other countries in the region and indeed on the continent. Please help us help ourselves.
Lastly, with developments in South Africa, I call for enough mechanisms and measures to be put in place to ensure the security and protection of all Zimbabwean citizens. Section 35(3)(a) of the Constitution of Zimbabwe obliges the state as a peremptory duty and mandatory obligation, to protect citizens wherever they maybe. This right is available to all citizens in and outside Zimbabwe.
New Africa is the way to go
We need a new way, a new dawn on the continent.
Africa must unite on values of freedom democratic values, free fair elections and prosperity for its people. SADC must be a people’s community not a community of its leaders alone. The African Union must be truly an African people’s Union.
We can’t be Africa without Africans.
Building a better Africa for all
Let’s build a great Africa for all
God bless Africa and heal the world!
Adv Nelson Chamisa
President – Movement For Democratic Change
COMMENTS
It was wrong that the Europeans ‘conquered’ and ‘enslaved’ the peoples of Africa; it cannot have been just or proper, but at the time the world thought like that. Do not forget that even in Europe (perticully Britaine Major) people where made to work long hours for little pay simply to satisfy the greed of the elite class. In France the elite class paid no taxes – the populous could do that. We are now in a more enlightened times, but new challenges are upon all of us, Climate change, rising population etc. You have benefited from the West recherche in to Disease, famine, Technology etc; indeed we all need to be grateful of that. Forgo your tribal wars, be honest, be gracious to you fellow beings and now work out you differences in a civilized way. Help is at hand as long as you play along with the ground rules. Tackle your elite ‘Winner takes all’ syndrome. Even the Romans has a system that only persons of the right caliber could govern. So in hard fact you are not / where not alone in your predicaments and quests, for even as I write, evil forces are at work within ‘the white mans world’ to return to the grim days of servitude. Stand up, be counted, with heads held high and do not let the buggers grind you down.
The African remains confused. Who am I? Where did I come from? Where am I going? How am I going to get there? Who do I need to partner to get to my destination?
Hence Africa remains unable to answer the above questions and more. In fact Africa has not even started asking these questions. Primitive, is adequate to describe this…unborn species?
Ha ha ha South Africans ran to Zimbabwe, Zambia, Mozambique etc running from aphatheid. Well they no longer remember that, and those who we sheltered are now instigating violence as a diversion from their plunder and failure to match what the John Vosters built. PATHETIC!
apart from learning books away from social life at schools it is of essence that human beings are taught how to liaise with each other, the importance of life, how to interact its an important aspect which can ultimately create humanity
The African or black man’s problem is unsolvable and is the very reason why we went from slavery to colonization to neocolonization. As Africans betrayed Africans to maintain the human resource plundering institution called slavery, so ever since have our people, leaders, become the active initiators of the new plunder systems——in linguistic euphemism but in real characterization ,stealing, as we speak, 2 billion U.S dollars ( pure stolen money) is leaving Nigeria to be stocked in foreign banks. The African is an entity that knows not himself, does not understand human actualization, does not know and understand self respect and self dignity and because he lacks consciousness , he is bereft of the ability to design and control his destiny..
Now everyone of them looks up to wEF for advice and money for the way forward. Disgracefully, these knuckle heads will never understand none of global meetings will be of any help. Name any country that has risen to prominence by depending on foreign assistance and advice? Too much of Harvard, University of London, Oxford, for all these will never help us. The emergent Asian revolutionized economy had no many Harvards at the helms of their revolutionizing institutions but rather served as extracts to add to their original thinking base. Thus the changes seen in Asia is propped by some firm cultural principles. To the contrary, Africa’s firm cultural base is dancing and singing— all which begets lazy mental workmanship and with a lazy brain we beget impoverishment.
The African seems to think of nothing than look for any means to put on an unfortified pinnnacle where he could have easy access to money to be stolen at will and should any questions the inordinate actions, the soldiers and security men are brought in to weigth heavily on you the ordinary citizen.
There is a mountain height of things to be said but let stop thus far by opening that the problem witnessed in South Africa is that of leadership failure throughout Africa——–stealing of large sums of money and siphoned to private accounts overseas, gross leadership ignorance of what leadership ought to be by learning from others—– how many American leaders have stolen public funds and siphoned it to Africa, how many Swiss gov’t officials, British officials, Chinese officials, etc,etc have siphoned public funds to Africa? So first it was human cargo. Now money and human cargo. So simply put, the African is a living entity that is brain-dead for the dead know etu not shame. And for clarity sake, I am Nigerian
THE ETERNAL AGONy OF A PEOPLE:
Now, with the wealth in Zimbabwe( so- called Pearl and Breadbasket of Africa) Nigeria, Cameroon, Zambia, Ivory Coast, and so on and so forth, can any one, by any stretch of stellar imagination comprehend why these places are so battered with impoverishment? Again, through some long gruesome struggle, South Africa was snatched from the jaws of Apartheid. So,the first and most fundamental question to be raised by any person devoid of any speck of mental retardation is, ” how did it come to happen that a strange man will travel from far, far Europe, dock on your shore with just a few men and with some extraordinary wisdom and intelligence schemed you, then set up a system to enslave you in your home land?” Then this same man after installing a base on your shore gradually consolidated power not only to enslve you who are more populous and pure natives of the land but in addition, extended far beyond to encompass two- thirds of your native land. Then he outsmarted you to begin to wage wars against your own people, capture your own–be it neighboring village or tribe , and literally not selling for anything of value but just giving it away without any qualms. It is in Same semblance we do witness today where a South African will bravely face another African from another tribe or neighboring community with a tyre and set him or her ablaze without any human feelings of grave suffering or extreme agony but never the same to a distant Arab or Indian or white or Chinese because of those, he entertains great respect and attaches dignity but to the fellow black, he stares with an approaching lion’s ferocity with all intent to destroy by inflicting the gravest agony.
Look, the Cameroon crisis is no different, for here are two brothers fighting and the French part, with all the influence from, and acting on behalf of France, has been on a mayhem against the English part just because the latter having been oppressed, I mean really oppressed for over 50 years, was just agitating for some recognition. Then it’s leaders hid their way into Nigeria but what happened, the French government, the same white masters, mechanized their way to influence the abduction of these people who in historic reality are Nigerians ,back to Cameroon and so, the white man wins again.Under such a scenario, the black man feels no shame. He has been paid some good sums of money so what is it if I sell my brothers for such invaluable. And not too long ago , Nigeria under one of the most erstwhile foreign minister we have had in the entire continent Brigadier Joseph Garba, spearheaded most, if not all the actions at the level of the U.N that resulted in the fall of Apartheid——The Anti-Apartheid Commission, etc that led to the total global isolation of Apartheid S.A in all economic activities and Sports—-this is less than 40yrs to 45 yrs ago. How can black South Africans be so impervious to such great works. Recall how much of the brunt of the wars for liberation Zimbanwe,, Zambia, etc bore from the many, many incursions by the then South African forces. Today, Nigerians , Zimbabweans, etc are the anathema of the South African blacks. Where was Thabo Mbeki during some of the Apartheid years? Nigeria,.
My appeal to the Nigerian leaders, Zimbabwean leaders, Malawian leaders stop all the stealing and get to work to develop just as the U.S, China, Australia,, rose from nothingness to be what they are today. Black people are dying in both the hands of the Arabs , some sold as slaves and led to the Mediterranean death bed in the north and South African blacks in the South of our native continent. So, do not blame black South Africans for since nothing remains the same in life may be, just may be, the tiimes may usher in the reversal of fortunes and these same South Africans may try to seek greener pasture in the lands of the beaten and when such times come, forget not the deeds of the ungrateful Zulus and Inkathas.