After a Long Walk to Freedom
Man’s inhumanity to man is a day to day trivial of everyday life; it comes with the flaws of every society and it can be in form of scarce hateful speeches or meagre mean actions. Contrarily, the spill of blood that runs in same veins is an extraordinary anarchy set loose in one house with diverse rooms, a barbaric atrocity unto one skin colour, all Africans; one continent is a clear case of mental derangement. With these massacre that has been on-going for days it’s shuddering to say Africa may never be able to unite and set the stool for greater developments.
With such upheaval in South Africa, Nelson Mandela’s words rings sound prophecy; ‘’There is no easy way to freedom anywhere, and many of us will have to pass through the valley of the shadow of death again and again before we reach the mountain top of our desires’’ He added; to deny people their human rights is to challenge their humanity and for them to be free is not merely to cast off one’s chains, but to live in a way that respects and enhances the freedom of others, So South Africans why? Our human compassion binds us to one another, not in pity or patronizingly but as human beings who have learnt how to turn our common goals into hope for the future.
South Africans got independence but their mind, body and soul are still in chains, their will have been bandaged, dependent so much on a superior will. Their existence is so disillusioned, man was born free but in some ways he has been put in bondage. Africa, and South Africa needs to go through a deep mending, a fine furnace that heals the body and mind, looking at their situation, one can pathetically say they are losing it. South Africans need healing; I recommend a national guidance and counselling for the teenagers and youth. These people need liberation, the freedom to rule their world and existence. Their independence is a sorry excuse of monumental slavery.
When collective violence among youths springs up, yes youth, because the cutlasses are not being wielded by old frail men, the arson is not fuelled by the elders, but then most definitely there is a ring leader, and he is the elder that has instructed the youths to do such biddings. It can be in other forms of protest and rebellion as a response to a gap of expectations and achievement, but the youthful menace is so displaced and not justifiable at any length.
It is quite alarming and disheartening how youths are easily confused, steered towards the path of
violence ‘’Capital is like dead labour, which, vampire-like, lives only by sucking living labour, and lives the more, the more it sucks.’’ Karl Marx. Is killing really triggered by majority black foreigners owning shops and gaining employments in a competitive labour market? The reason for this blood shed is highly preposterous. Did they for one fleeting second think that if they are killing such Africans it would not be retaliated by the affected nations? There has to be another explanation for this, it has to be something not of the ordinary, in the 21st century it is too absurd for one to capture stupidity of this magnitude to be perpetrated by right thinking people of the society.
At this point a line should be drawn between traditional rule and democracy, the harm that the Zulu King Goodwill Zwelithini and Oba Rilwan Akiolu of Lagos have invoked; violence and suppressed hate is irrevocable, the difference here is the Oba’s wish came true therefore his thugs were stayed from throwing the perceived enemies of the statenon-indigenes into the lagoon. Now those are the traditional tiers, in terms of democracy what qualifies President Jacob Zuma ‘eldest son, Edward Zuma on his statement ‘’We need to be aware that as a country we are sitting on a ticking time bomb of them [foreigners] taking over the country’’ Edward added that ‘’I am not only talking about foreigners from African countries, I am talking about Asians and Europe as well. They are a real security threat to this country and the police can’t catch them because they can’t be traced because some of them do not have proper documentation’’ If the King can be excused base on an old man blabbing foolish monarchal superiority , should the same pass be given to Edward Zuma, a much younger educated, informed individual who more better string of thoughts and resolution is expected, one who is supposed to be the lighter to coming generations, to rewrite a more proudhistory of his time, but there he stated societal statistics void of sanity and intelligence in a budding South Africa has not healed, it is still licking its deep wound of an ugly past, Apartheid is a fresh picture they carry in their memory, guess what? Their descendants have to open books and read about the gruesome existence they helplessly endured for years, then after independence, they are so disillusioned to grab the meaning to life, the whole nation needs a psychologist every second to reitalize their self-respect too long overridden by their colonial superior, they sought to transfer their aggression on a levelled or those they see to be inferior in their environment.
To most South Africans, lynching, genocide, and arson are normal actions. According ‘AchilleMbembe in small talks with a South African driver, he asked him: ‘’why do they need to kill these ‘’foreigners’’ in this manner?’’. His response: ‘’because under Apartheid, fire was the only weaponwe Blacks had. We did not have ammunitions, guns, and their likes. With fire we could make petrol bombs and throw them at the enemy from a safe distance’’ Today there is no need to be as close as possible to their body which we set in flames or dissect, each blow opening a huge wound that can never be healed. Or if it is healed at all, it must leave on ‘’these foreigners’’ the kinds of scars thatcan never be erased’’ Succinctly put, South African scared need to be cleared off, If possible their history should be rewritten for the sakes of posterity. But with such stunned impossibility they are drowning from their ruined foundation, the continents must join hands and rebuild their capacity ofsound reasoning, instead of casting hate speech and dire retaliations, let’s show some love because they have been exposed to so much savagery, treated less human. South Africans wallow in disillusioned fantasy, we need to turn their bleak world into Africa’s tranquil sun rising, South Africa is in turmoil, Africa unite in love and understanding so that the shadows on their rubble would be infiltrated by mending lights. For the love of continent Africans arise in more care, only love and understanding can heal wounds and make scars fade internally.
TONY TOKUNBO ETEKA FERNANDEZ 