We have all heard the lie being repeated time and time again that South Africans are xenophobic and they don’t like their fellow African brothers and sisters from other countries within Africa.
I beg to differ and, hence, I call it a lie. South Africans are not xenophobic at all. They have lived all their lives with their African brothers and sisters, side by side from the dark days of apartheid when migrant labour was the order of the day.
Remember the days of Wenella, a mining recruitment company which sourced mine workers from all over southern and central Africa in countries such as Angola, Botswana, Namibia, Swaziland, Lesotho, Mozambique, and the then federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland, now Zimbabwe, Zambia and Malawi.
Angola and Mozambique, the two Portuguese colonies in southern Africa, were known as Portuguese West Africa and Portuguese East Africa respectively, before their attainment of independence from the colonisers in the 70s.
Zambia and Zimbabwe formed the two Rhodesias, with Zambia being Northern Rhodesia and Zimbabwe being Southern Rhodesia. The Wenella recruitment company could not go beyond the two Rhodesias and Nyasaland, as other countries beyond them had already attained independence and were a no-go zone for apartheid South Africa.
These foreign migrant labourers lived side by side with their South African counterparts, the internal migrant labourers from the then Transkei, Ciskei, Natal, and of course your three Transvaal colonies of southern Transvaal, eastern Transvaal and northern Transvaal.
These migrant labourers used to live together, play together, eat together, sleep together, laugh together and cry together. You still had football players from Rhodesia such as Sugar Muguyo and others, including some from Malawi and Zambia.
Even musicians and actors came over to our country and there are still a number of leading musicians and actors born from these migrant mine labourers, gardeners and cooks – the latter two being mainly a preserve for Malawians as they were the best cooks and gardeners before women came into the employment realm as nannies.
What is worrying South Africans today, is not much that there are foreigners, but it’s the inherent criminal syndicates that have taken advantage of our hospitality to sell drugs on our streets under the guise of selling vegetables, mending shoes, clothes and as barbers with impunity from the law.
Back then, people were earning a decent living and we had no drug zombies for human beings.
We have just opened our borders to every Jack and Jill, Tom, Dick and Harry to walk into the country as if they’re going into a toilet. The majority of them are not bringing any rare skills to the country – except that of peddling drugs and committing armed robbery and murder and conning the less mentally gifted.
The only reason they’re allowed free reign in our country is because they are just the drug pushers (employees) and the real kingpins of the drug trade are high up in government corridors, hence, they will never be arrested except for a few smokescreen cases.
We want the government to tighten border control, jack up the application of the law, and sort out the wheat from the chaff – or our country will continue to be a haven for criminals such as the Radovan Krejcirs of this world.
