The barbaric onslaughts on fellow Africans by South African nationals have further disintegrated the African continent beyond repairs.
The xenophobic attacks which have displaced hundreds African foreign nationals living in South Africa was sparked by Mamelodi Concerned Residents group’s demonstration march on Friday, 17 February 2017.
According to South African media reports, the march took place with a backdrop of attacks against foreigners across select sections of Johannesburg and Pretoria.
In recent weeks, homes and businesses have been torched and looted in the name of stopping crime committed by foreigners. The actions have been fueled by both the sentiment that foreigners are committing crime in South Africa and that they have been able to economically prosper where locals have not, according to Daily Maverick.
After the recent violence, which seems like a recurring event in certain parts of South Africa for the last few years, a number of groups have condemned the plans to march and the ideology behind it, the newspaper noted.
“Nigerians, Pakistanis, Zimbabweans etc bring nothing but destruction; hijack our buildings, sell drugs; inject young South African ladies with drugs and sell them as prostitutes,” the fliers said, according to the Daily Maverick newspaper.
Friday’s demonstration came days after more than 30 foreign-owned shops across Pretoria were looted. Since the beginning of the year, at least 14 Somalis have been killed in South Africa, according to the Somali Community Board of South Africa.
The native South Africans claim they cannot compete with these nationals and the only way to get a job is to do away with them.
Some blamed the recurrent attacks – which centred on Pretoria, Durban and Johannesburg – on unemployment and poor political leadership.
African governments including Ghana and Nigeria complained that South Africa is failing to do enough to protect foreign nationals, though it now insists it has quelled the violence.
The chairman House of Representatives Committee on Foreign Affairs, Nnenna Ukeje-Elendu, told journalists in Abuja, Nigeria that failure of the South African government to put in place institutional policies was responsible for the xenophobic attacks in the country.
According to her, with the ugly economic figures coming out of South Africa, which include: unemployment at 26 percent, growth at 0.2 percent, hunger, anger, feeling of disenfranchisement, and lack of government policies to make provisions for people living in the townships, xenophobia would continue to be a recurring decimal in the country.
“With the economic figures coming out of South Africa, unemployment is at 26 percent, growth at 0.2 percent; Hunger, anger, feeling of disenfranchisement, and lack of government policies to make provisions for people living in the townships and so on. Unless there is some kind of international intervention, we are not going to see changes in the next couple of months.
The disposition of the South African government towards xenophobia had never been pro-active, she added.
“Without a sustained international coalition that includes economic, diplomatic, and social sanctions against South Africa, the government will continue to issue apologies to countries of victims of xenophobia and other hate crimes but would do nothing to stem the ugly tide in the country”.
She said: “It’s tragic; it’s unfortunate. As one of the leaders – the second largest economy in Africa, I think they should be alive to their responsibility to the rest of the world.
“And for me, as far as I am concerned, this is the worst case of memory failure for the South Africans because surely, they must remember that it was the same foreigners that came together to liberate them from their country, she told the media during a chat.
“So, asides from it being the worst case of memory failure I have seen, I also think it has just gone unabated; and every time it happens, South African government issues apologies to the rest of the world. The rest of the people pick up their lives and go back again, and then, they do nothing about institutional political reasons behind it and it just continues unabated.
“Every so often, we have these conversations, be it 62 people dead or seven people dead as in last year, or whatever. We just keep seeing a recurring decimal. And, I think the time has come for us to have some kind of institutional and international coalition against xenophobia.
“We have seen the same kind of international coalition against racism in South Africa where the rest of the world came together and decided it was time to stamp out apartheid. I think the time has come quite frankly for there to be the same sustained international coalition against South African xenophobia and all hate crimes.”
In 2008 when similar uprising happened in the country, arrests were made but there was no prosecution; a development, which may have encouraged the repeat of the xenophobic attack in 2015 and 2017.
On the economic front, it is sad to say that after several years of political independence in Africa, trade among African countries is still pegged at only about 12% which many African business executives, economists, and development partners are not enthused about.
They blamed this development on weak intra-African trade links which is being described as “pitifully weak”.
On the ECOWAS Bloc, the intra-regional trade among ECOWAS countries which is currently below 12 per cent has not been encouraging enough. For instance 46 per cent and eight per cent of Ghana’s exports find their way to the European Union (EU), a politico-economic union of Europe countries and Chinese markets respectively.
James Asare-Adjei, President of the Association of Ghana Industries (AGI) laments: “It is unfortunate that ECOWAS has not been able to enforce a mechanism that forestalls the unilateral imposition of ban on imports by any member country and the failure to adhere to ECOWAS protocols”.
“Our regional integration ought to be more business centred rather than political which is one of the reasons for the delays in policy implementation”, he emphasises at the maiden ECOWAS Industrial Summit organised by the Ministry of Trade and Industry, Ghana in collaboration with the ECOWAS member states.
Despite the efforts made by African governments to boost intra-African trade, it still remains slow.
The bulk of the region’s trade is with Europe and America; only about 12% is with other African countries. By comparison 70% of Europe’s trade is with its own continent.
The same is true in Asia. In North America the figure is 40%”. It is therefore clear that intra-African trade is far below its potential and several reasons have been adduced as accounting for the weak regional trade performance in Africa.
During Africa’s colonial period, road and rail routes were built for the purposes of transporting goods out of African countries rather than to create regional networks for trade purposes.
It is regrettably that these infrastructure networks which Africa’s colonial masters bequeathed to the African countries had not changed much.
It takes a significant amount of time and money to cross borders because of the poor logistics and transport infrastructure, which is a deterrent to intra-Africa trade. As a result of this, the cost of doing business in Africa becomes more expensive, she indicated.
However, the World Bank’s Doing Business 2014 report: Understanding Regulations for Small and Medium-Size Enterprises revealed that the pace of business regulatory reform continues to accelerate following the financial crisis of 2008–09.
According to the report, if economies around the world were to follow best practices in regulatory processes for starting a business, entrepreneurs would spend 45 million fewer days each year satisfying bureaucratic requirements.
The report added many countries in Sub-Saharan Africa engaged in reforms aimed at reducing burdensome regulations and building stronger legal institutions. In 2012/13, more than twice as many African economies in the region made reforms, compared to 2005.
Out of the 20 economies that have most improved business regulation since 2009, nine are in Sub-Saharan Africa: Benin, Burundi, Côte d’Ivoire, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Liberia, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, and Togo.
African governments to wake up from their deep slumber and work towards the integration of the continent. They should bear in mind that a single voice has no power in this era of globalization.
By Masahudu Ankiilu Kunateh, African Eye Report