Are Ghanaians Learning Any Lessons From The Murderous Xenophobic Violence in South Africa?

Unfortunately, some of the citizens of South Africa, fellow black Africans of course, have embarked on completely barbaric xenophobic violence against the nationals of other sister African countries residing in their country. My stepsister lives in South Africa for almost six years now, working as a seamstress.

They have gone on murderous rampage through the streets of South Africa, lynching, stoning, impaling foreigners on sharpened iron rods and burning some alive in this modern day and age. Their principal reason for their absolutely ridiculous action is that foreigners have taken over their jobs; while foreigners are working, they the natives are jobless, so they claim.

They have no legal or moral justification for their premeditated or spontaneous outrageous infliction of total barbarism on fellow Africans from sister-African nations.

When they were being tormented by the wicked Afrikaners, we shared their pain. We made supplications to God for their liberation from slavery on their own soil. We sang their hymn 'Nkosi Sikelel' iAfrika' (God Bless Africa) at School parades in the 1960s. Now look how their younger clueless generations are doing to the very people who served as the shoulders their elders cried on.

I condemn without reservation the heinous murderous crime these black South Africans have committed against their fellow black Africans for very absurd reasons.

In the face of this deplorably condemnable action by some blood-thirsty South African vampires, what lessons are we learning from it? This is the question that we need to address.

I shall partly blame the roguish attitudes of the entire African leaders for what is unfolding in South Africa to the shame of the African Continent. Most of them are too corrupt. They embezzle the money that could have been used to carry out infrastructural developments to bring about job creation for their teeming jobless citizens. Any such stolen funds are stashed away in their personal foreign accounts in countries mostly outside continental Africa hence the dearth of job opportunities for their youth.

In other cases, they use the stolen money to buy companies or carry out investments in those foreign countries e.g. Ghana President John Dramani Mahama allegedly investing heavily in Dubai from his stolen millions of US dollars while Ghanaians suffer total deprivation.

The entire citizens of those countries whose nationals are sojourning or residing in South Africa as immigrants, and have become victims to their ongoing xenophobic violence must have themselves to blame. We often glorify corrupt persons within our midst instead of condemning their acts hence the perpetuation and ramification of corruption in most African nations.

Until we hold our leaders accountable for their unpalatable actions, Ghanaians especially, shall continue to migrate to any part of the world called a country even if there is practically nothing to gain from there. We shall always be on the move in search of greener pastures from where even pastures do not exist.

We should cease supporting corrupt, clueless and incompetent governments. We should not be supportive of bad governments on tribal grounds but shun them even if they were part of our individual extended family. Unless we do that, the fate of our butchered or suffering compatriots shall one day be ours.

The new world order is turning against immigrants wherever they are. Political parties that are against influx of foreigners into their countries, staunchly propagating xenophobic ideas, are gaining popularity across the world. Therefore, we are obliged to build our own countries to curtail our propensity to migrate to foreign lands to encounter such untimely deaths as suffered by our unfortunate compatriots in South Africa or suffered by many Ghanaians in Nigeria in the 1980s.

I very well remember the incident of "Black Maria" in Nigeria in 1980-1982 when the police in Lagos packed Ghanaians, Ivoirians and other foreign nationals like sardines into their police Black Maria van to suffocate about forty to hundred of them to death in one hot sunny afternoon.

My condolences to all the families that have lost their loved ones in the momentary madness by some confused lazy people in South Africa. I hope we as a nation of one people with a common destiny will learn a bitter lesson from the fate that has befallen our dear victims of South African madness to seriously begin to build our own individual countries.

Rockson Adofo