Mandela’s people who kill black Africans

IN 2009, Bishop Desmond Tutu was on the campus of the American University of Nigeria as a guest speaker. In his speech, he apologized to Nigerians for the xenophobic attacks on black Africans the previous year.

More than five years later today, South Africans are shamelessly slaughtering their fellow African brothers and sisters, claiming they had gone to their country to take their jobs.

Is this what Mandela fought for? Is this what Steve Biko died for? Is this what Bishop Tutu, who coined the phrase ‘Rainbow nation’, stands for? Could this be what Nigeria led the rest of Africa to fight for?

Today, the murderous actions of black South Africans have diminished that nation and their heroes in the eyes of the rest of Africa. How Botha and his white gang will be sniggering at the black race behind their thick doors! While white minority rule prevailed in South Africa, black migrants were not slaughtered on the streets of that country for “taking away jobs meant for black South Africans.”

But now that blacks control government and whites control their economy, South Africans now blame the failure of hope and promise of a “free” South Africa on their fellow black Africans.

How blind they are! Their misplaced aggression is an example of extra-punitive aggression. What really did the black freedom fighters of South Africa accomplish? Yes, South Africa now has a black president.

But let us recall what General Sani Abacha said while Mandela was South Africa’s president: “South Africa was a white country with a black head.” How true this is today! When you control the imagination of a man, you can push him against even his brethren or self-interest.

Of what use is political power without economic power? He that controls the economy determines who gets the jobs. Black South Africans must know what the real problem is.

Slaughtering black Africans on their streets can’t make them cleaner, nor could that bring them the jobs they lack. I was only about 11 years old when my father made me understand the plight of black South Africans.

When Steve Biko was killed and I read about and saw the plight of my black South African brothers and sisters, it triggered anger in an 11-year-old boy. Like me, many young and older Nigerians saw the oppression of black South Africans as their oppression. Their tears were those of Nigerians and other black Africans on the continent.

We attended the same universities with South Africans who came to live and study in Nigeria. Our governments took risks against white world powers for the sake of black South Africans. Now, those ungrateful South Africans slaughter fellow black people from other African countries, while sparing whites living in their country.

I am not saying they should sink their stained paws into the flesh of white people. Rather, I am trying to expose the virus that lodges in their soul.

In the book of Judges in the Holy Bible, chapters 19 and 20, there is the account of a Jewish man whose wife was raped all night to death by a gang of Jews in the town of Gibeah in the tribe of Benjamin.

He cut up his wife’s corpse into 12 pieces and sent them throughout the territory of Israel. All who saw this said, “Nothing like this has ever been since the Israelites went up from the land of Egypt until this day.

Take note of it, consider it, and speak up.” Then the whole nation sent to the tribe of Benjamin, saying: “What is this wickedness that happened among you? So then, hand over the men, the perverse lot, who are in Gibeah, so that we may kill them and purge this wickedness from Israel.”

Surprisingly, the Benjamites refused this request. Rather, they gathered to battle against their brethren, the rest of Israel. And on enquiry whether they should go to war against their brethren, the Benjamite; the LORD answered the rest of the children of Israel thus: “Go up tomorrow; I will give them into your hand.” The tribe of Benjamin was roundly defeated. To be continued.