By Omoh Giwa

Dearest Madiba,

How is the afterlife? I hope this letter finds you somewhere between the izinyanya and a privileged seat beside Qamata, drinking celestial beer and discussing the affairs of the living. If not, pardon the disturbance to your eternal repose. I have, after all, come with a complaint, and earthly avenues of redress have proven about as efficacious as a rain dance in the Sahara. 

I am unhappy, sir. My writings have failed to produce the desired effect. I insult people who deserve to be insulted with the precision of a surgeon. I report the activities of cretins to every earthly and, apparently, heavenly authority available. I deploy argument, irony and when necessary, well-aimed invective. Nothing.

The ethereal recipients of my increasingly futile epistolary interventions appear to have perfected, like their earthly counterparts, the sacerdotal art of governmental silence. My missives ascend; responses, apparently, do not descend. Perhaps somewhere in the firmament there is a celestial registry marked “Correspondence from Omoh Giwa: Acknowledge Receipt, Ignore Contents.”

So, Mandiba, I have decided to expand my jurisdiction (I would ignore Nigerians too in my afterlife). I am now reporting matters to my non-Nigerian ancestors. (I trust this modest appropriation will not offend your kinsmen.) Bear with me. I shall not monopolise eternity. 

Sir, there’s fire on the mountain. Your country, the one that became one of the great moral symbols of liberation; the country whose struggle against apartheid was sustained by African countries that opened their homes, universities, borders and pockets to South Africans fleeing oppression, now appears to be entertaining the notion that the most expeditious solution to its socioeconomic maladies is to expel, terrorise, maim and, in some cases, kill those who once helped it survive its own historical nightmare. I think there has been a clerical error. Please check the heavenly archives. Surely this cannot be the same country.

I understand their argument. Illegal immigration is a legitimate policy problem. Crime, pressure on public services, border management and unemployment are legitimate policy problems. But somehow the African political imagination has produced the most astonishing solution: If the house is on fire, blame the tenant who rented the spare room. Find a foreigner. Preferably a Black one. Abahambe! They must go. Problem solved.

Mandiba, the irony is that the foreigners being blamed are not all unemployed men squatting beneath trees, waiting to be spoon-fed by the South African fiscus. Some are entrepreneurs. Some are traders. Some are professionals. Some have lived there for decades. Some have South African children. Some possess legal documentation. Some own businesses. Some pay taxes. Some employ South Africans. In short, some have done precisely what governments everywhere profess to want migrants to do: work, invest and contribute. Yet they remain sufficiently foreign to become convenient repositories for the frustrations of a nation. And then the rhetoric becomes even more piquant when foreign-owned businesses enter the equation. The syllogism appears to be this: The foreigner is stealing your job. The foreigner is running a successful business. Therefore, the foreigner must leave. Once he leaves, hand the business to a South African. The South African will somehow employ himself. Economic prosperity will descend upon the republic like manna. I confess I have encountered more rigorous economics in a roadside beer parlour.

Then came the World Cup. Sir, Africa’s sense of humour is an undying resource. Africans began joking that if Bafana Bafana played against itself, they would support the stadium. Others began identifying as Hispanics and, presumably, any nationality sufficiently distant from South Africa to guarantee immunity from being mistaken for a job-stealing African. Social media, naturally, accomplished what diplomacy could not: it converted an international embarrassment into a continental punchline. I laughed. Not because xenophobia is funny. But because satire sometimes performs the work diplomacy is too ceremonious to undertake. It holds up a mirror. And occasionally, the mirror has a wicked sense of humour.

And now, Mandiba, about Nigeria. I know what you are probably thinking: “You Nigerians should first fix your own country.” Yes, we know. Nigeria is not exactly a showroom of administrative excellence. Our government can lose billions of naira and spend the following week investigating who lost the billions. We can have a national crisis and establish a committee to investigate why the crisis has refused to respect committee procedure. We can watch a problem metastasise for ten years and then announce that the government is “deeply concerned.” Deep concern. Nigeria’s most successful national resource after crude oil.

But despite our own spectacular dysfunction, we have not forgotten what South Africa once meant to Africa. Nigeria and other African countries supported the anti-apartheid struggle. We opened our doors, spent our money and lent our voices to the liberation of South Africans. And now Africans are being told to leave because they are African. What a spectacular plot twist. Even Greek mythology would reject it as excessive.

And now, to add a final comic flourish, South Africa has reportedly sought reimbursement from Nigeria. Mandiba, please! What cost? Who will bear responsibility for lives lost? Properties abandoned? Businesses destroyed? Livelihoods interrupted? If a man sets fire to your bags, drives you from his premises and then sends you a bill for the cost of the vehicle that transported you away from the flames, at what point does accounting become satire? Speak to your successors. Tell them we cannot afford another bill. We are still paying for the things we supported yesterday. We are paying for the things we did not support. We are paying for the things we were told were free. We are paying for things somebody promised would pay for themselves. And occasionally, we are paying for things that do not exist. If your successors insist on sending us an invoice, tell them to send it to the ancestors. I understand they have eternal credit. We do not. Besides, I suspect our government may already be considering another loan. I cannot say what the loan is for. Perhaps we are borrowing money to investigate why we need to borrow money. At this point, nothing surprises me.

So, Mandiba, please speak to your successors. Remind them what you told us Ubuntu meant. I suspect someone has changed the definition. Perhaps the new edition reads: 

“I am because we are; unless you are Nigerian.”

I shall not say Yours faithfully. That would be presumptuous. I shall not say Yours sincerely. That would be dishonest. And certainly not Yours in Pan-African solidarity. That phrase has been through enough.

Not Yours,

(Before your kinsmen accuse me of appropriating you.)

Omoh Giwa still writes from the University of Lagos.

P.S. I hope the ancestors have better governance than we do. If they do not, please do not tell me. I have reached my yearly quota of disappointment.

 

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