President Jacob Zuma once boasted that the African National Congress will rule until Jesus comes back and time finishes. The Peoples Democratic Party of Nigeria boasted modestly that they will rule Nigeria for 60 years continuously. They ruled for sixteen years. Using this figure against the end of time that the African National Congress will rule, we can say they would wish to rule for three thousand years but they would only rule for thirty years! And the way the ANC is losing voters to the Democratic Alliance and the Economic Freedom Fighters, nine years is a realistic extreme date of their being voted out of power in South Africa. It is against this projection that the ruling party dare not criticise any Black action, no matter how reprehensible, in order not to hurt their hunger for votes.
Let us begin with the trade unions. The Congress of South African Trade Unions, COSATU, is the third leg of the ruling alliance of the ANC and the South African Communist Party. The SACP contributes little to the voter hunger of the ANC. Until the last election, COSATU delivered multi million votes to the ANC at every election. In the last election, some of the unions kicked against being just voting mules for the ANC without getting something back for the workers. Services are privatised. Labour recruitment is privatised. Politicians refuse life style audits and continue to ignore labour-related issues. So, some unions refused to campaign for the ANC and refused to contribute to the campaign chest of the ruling party. The result is that the ANC votes is dwindling while the DA and the EFF are gaining in strength in parliament. In fact the opposition parties are already in a position to cripple parliamentary business.
King Goodwill Zwalatini kaBhekuzulu came to the throne at the age of 21 and was his uncle Buthelezi’s puppet in his Inkatha Freedom Party. This party pretended to be the Afenifere of Zululand. But majority Zulu distanced themselves from it and Buthelezi lost power in the province. The King was in a difficult condition thereafter. It was at this point that the ruling party took him on, put him on a R60m retainship as traditional ruler of the AmaZulu. He has since been the puppet of the ANC. Xenophobia is not strange to South Africa’s difficult and unequal society. 2008 is within recent memory. The King could be seeking populism as well as serving the ruling party. Traditional rulers are not getting more popular thanks to campaigns for democratic republicanism.
Recent research into the slogan that foreigners take South African jobs show that this is not the case. Simply because the slogan is repeated all over South Africa does not make it true. The reason for the greater appearance of greater inequality than before are that there is more corruption in the political elite and fewer people are on the social grant list. The reason for fewer people being on social grant is because there has been a tightening of the grant claim to eliminate ghost cllaimants and keep the figure at 12 million. The economic situation is not improving. Unemployment anecdotally is at 40%. The delivery of goods and services such as light and water has deteriorated. Fewer and fewer South Africans have access to the good things of life. And life more abundant as promised to all, especially the South African Blacks who have been deprived under the apartheid system.
So, 21 years after 1994, there is anger, there is disappointment and there is disillutionment. All these against the governing ANC. There has been incompetence and there has been corruption. Over the years, there have been demonstrations against service delivery all over the country; rather than improving things have gone worse. Hundreds of these protests have taken place and the law enforcement agencies have been able to contain them. Perhaps it is this failure to get the government to do something about the grievances of the protesters that has taken the protestrs to go for the easier targets, the obvious, visible foreigners who seem to be prospering in their midst. Maybe so, maybe not. But, as service delivery protests have declined, xenophobic protests have increased.
Foreigners have come to South Africa from all over the world. They have come from Africa. They have come from Europe. They have come as both legal and illegal immigrants. They have come as straight citizens, as well as well-heeled criminals. As far back as the late 1990s, Cape Town drug lords were complaining that Nigerian drug lords were encroaching on their traditional territories. From time to time some of us Nigerians in South African universities have been asked to translate for Nigerian drug mules who claim not to speak English. Also there have been well-publicised cases of Nigerian drug traffickers in league with South African counterparts in doing their thing.
At the university level, there are fewer and fewer South African graduates going on to do research work that would lead to their replacing the aging professors. Instead, there are more and more foreign students at the postgraduate level, a number of them Nigerians.
The South African government should be held responsible for what is happening. Other African countries must hold the South African government responsible for what is happening. The same government must be held responsible for what should happen in the future to correct the situation.
Kole Omotoso writes from Akure.
