File: Xenophobia
By Tony Eluemunor
It is bad enough that Africa has not had the fantastically peaceable and futuristic twins that Europe had in Germany’s Conrad Adeneaur and France’s Jean Monnet.
File: Xenophobia
The duo will forever be remembered for re-writing the history of Europe, uniting the once murderous bands of bandits who devastated their continent and the rest of the world. Now, the thought of war between two European countries appears improbable just like the likelihood of any attack against the citizens of one European country by the citizens of another country.
Ah, we have to leave Europe and their delectable European Union alone for a while and focus on the death spasms of a once glorious thought that occupied the hearts and minds of some great Africans of long ago.
A terrible tragedy is taking place in South Africa right now. It is not only that they are killing their brothers and sisters from other African countries, they are actually killing THEMSELVES because they are closing the opportunities that would have opened up to the benefit of South Africans in the years and decades to come—in a united Africa.
Part of this tragedy is that South Africans are killing citizens of other African countries resident in their country. I know that is unquantifiable tragedy, especially because Nigerian blood has been, and is still being shed as marauding South Africans hunt them down as though they are rats. One unforgettable video has been trending; it shows a young skinny black boy set ablaze and a huge throng of fellow blacks, South Africans of course, laughed fiendishly as the boy turned and twisted as pain wracked his body. It was a prelude to hell because only demons could behave as those people who denied their humanity, did in that video. It was totally devilish. A Policeman was there and he too, joined in the laughter aroused in those heartless people that set the boy ablaze.
I still vividly remember the Congolese poet, Tchicaya U Tam’si (1931-1988) piercing my soul the first time I encountered him. I have forgotten the name of that poem but I remember the lines that touched my heart, soul and spirit: “My soul bleeds for Emmet Till/ A child whose heart bleeds in mine.”
To my eternal shame, I must confess that until I read that book in which that poem was featured, I had never ever heard of Emmet Till… and I was a year two student of English at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka. Yet, the death of Emmet Till launched the Civil Rights movement in the US and propelled the phenomenon the world came to know as Mohammed Ali—the greatest boxer or athlete that ever lived and perhaps that may ever live. Ali and Emmet Till shared the same birthday, and his death opened Ali’s eyes to the Black World like never before: Emmett Till was born in 1941, in Chicago and grew up in a middle-class black neighbourhood. Till was visiting relatives in Money, Mississippi, in 1955 when the 14-year-old was accused of whistling at Carolyn Bryant, a white woman who was a cashier at a grocery store.
Four days later, Bryant’s husband Roy and his half-brother J.W. Milam kidnapped Till, beat him and shot him in the head. The men were tried for murder, but an all-white, male jury acquitted them.
The brutal abduction and murder of 14-year-old Emmett Till on August 28, 1955, galvanized the emerging Civil Rights Movement and I didn’t know anything about him; so much for issues concerning Africa that is taught in our schools. Once in a while, I still google his name on the internet just to look at his handsome face… and to wonder at the progress that has been made in race relations in the US, and the much that still remains to be made there.
Emmet Till’s story shows that much good could come from much evil. Instead of thinking of retaliating against South Africans or their business concerns in Nigeria, we should think about how to save Africa from such disgrace in future.
So, who will be Africa’s Konrad Adenauer and Jean Omer Marie Gabriel Monnet?
Adenuear and Monnet? Konrad Hermann Joseph Adenauer (German:; 5 January 1876 – 19 April 1967) the first Chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany (West Germany) from 1949 to 1963.
In the early years of the Federal Republic he led his country from the ruins of World War II, to becoming a productive and prosperous nation that forged close relations with France, an enemy in two World Wars. During his years in power, West Germany achieved democracy, stability, international respect and economic prosperity. This devout Catholic has lessons of age for Nigerians: Adenauer, who was Chancellor until age 87, was dubbed “Der Alte” (“the elder”). British politician and historian Roy Jenkins called him “the oldest statesman ever to function in elected office.” He remains the oldest head of government for a major country and performed creditably.
Monet was a French political economist and diplomat. An influential supporter of European unity, a founding father of the European Union. While Adenuear died in 1967, Monet lived until 1979. Both did not live to see the European continent-wide citizenship established when the Maastricht Treaty came into force in 1993, but they witnessed the first fruits of their labour because the EU traces its origins to the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC) and the European Economic Community (EEC), established, respectively, by the 1951 Treaty of Paris and 1957 Treaty of Rome.
Yet, what do we have in the African homeland? Nothing. Not even West African countries have been able to have a common currency. And to think that the ECOWAS common currency was proposed to take effect from 2003!!! Once you integrate Africa, xenophobia will vanish.
Monnet and Adenuear brought France and Germany to collaboration on steel and coal and one thing led to the other, and other European countries began to join them. Nigeria and Ghana can start the Eco ECOWAS currency integration show, then they may attract South Africa and Kenya. Other countries will queue to join the union once they see the benefits.
That would be more beneficial to Nigerians than fighting and retaliating against South Africa just as the racial integration in the US is to the benefit of both the blacks and the whites. We all need peace to thrive.
For now, South African rioters not only kill foreigners, they are killing African unity and destroying what NnamdiAzikiwe and Kwame Nkrumah and all the other Apostles of African unity stood for.
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