Africa is one big country with many problems
Bame Piet | Friday April 24, 2015 17:33
Just when it looked like things were improving for the ‘dark continent’, following the 2011 Arab Spring, we are once again back to square one – feeding international news media with negative news.
African leaders, academics, and even journalists have for many years been moaning about the Western media’s seeming obsession with the negative side of the African continent. The politicians have lamented images of war, disease and poverty that have come to be associated with the continent more than anything else. They were right.
Perhaps feeling the pressure, some of the biggest international broadcasters CNN and BBC began airing special programmes whose main objective was to report positivey about Africa . These days, the international audience can watch African Voices, and Inside Africa on CNN; and BBC Focus on Africa. Whether the ‘sunshine journalism’ campaign has reached them is a topic for another day.
From the north, west, central, east, and south; the continent is once again facing all sorts of challenges. Just last week, whilst images of the brutality of South Africans on their fellow Africans spread all over the world; another tragedy gained centre stage when over 700 migrants drowned in the Mediterranean Sea. They were en-route to Italy, escaping the hardship in their homeland, of war and poverty. Most of the migrants, from Libya were hoping for a better life abroad.
In the east, the massacre of 147 students at Garissa University students in Kenya is still fresh in the minds of news followers. The massacre came just two years after the Nairobi Mall attack when 67 lives were lost.
The outbreak of Ebola in West Africa last year, which has claimed more than 10,000 lives, has not helped the situation either. Several months after the disease ravaged the region it subsided, but the damage it has caused on the image of the continent will take roughly another decade to be repaired.
Down south, a rainbow nation that was liberated just 20 years ago, with the help of the international community, Africans included; is now behaving like gangsters – the boys in the hood. The rainbow nation, which was once Africa’s superpower, before it was overtaken by Nigeria, is killing anybody they deem an intruder in their ‘neighbourhood’. Gun and knife wielding thugs are running amok, some even using tyres to burn fellow human beings accusing them of stealing their jobs. What they forget is that South African retail stores, construction companies, manufacturers, and service providers are found in every country in southern Africa and beyond.
‘Boys in the hood’ forget that the consumers of South African products indirectly create employment for the citizens of that country. In Botswana for instance, throughout the 80s, 90s, and 20s, South African contractors used to enjoy multimillion pula tenders for construction of our infrastructure. They continue to enjoy such, even today. In many instances these companies brought their own manpower, skilled and non-skilled; they brought their own food, water, even toilet paper.
South African Airways dominates the air travel in the SADC region, and it is the their citizens who are benefiting from this monopoly.
South African music, films, print media and others find their way into the shelves of stores in our land and it is the citizens of that country who benefit from the sales of these products.
What ‘boys in the hood’ also forgot is that the trucks that pass through our roads, transporting goods to the north of the country to places like Zambia, Democratic Republic of Congo and beyond, destroy our only thing we have to give them- jobs. Like George Bush once said, Africa is “one big country” with many problems. The future of this continent can only be secured by our political leaders who, unfortunately, do not want the world to know what is taking place in their land. When those pictures in the Sunday Times of a Mozambican man, Emmanuel Sithole, being attacked and stabbed to death by thugs in Alexander township, instead of condemning the brutal murder, S.A President Jacob Zuma criticised the newspaper for publishing the images for the world to see. “They make us look bad” were Zuma’s words. This attitude towards the media is the common characteristic of African leaders, especially those who do not want to account for their failures.
In a press release issued on April 17, the Institute of Security Studies argued; “Xenophobia demands decisive and principled leadership” and that South Africa must act decisively in response to the xenophobia, but solutions must be based on unity and cohesion, not more segregation. The release also stated that the negative attitudes of many South Africans toward foreigners remain unchanged since the recent incidents and in 2008 when 62 foreigners were murdered.
The ISS statement argues that the notion that foreigners take South Africans’ jobs which drives up unemployment and they are a cause of the crime problem have been disapproved.
“Using data from Statistics South Africa, a study by the Migrating for Work Research Consortium showed that in 2014 just 4% of the working population was made up of foreigners. Research by the Gauteng City-Region Observatory showed that rather than causing unemployment, international migrants contribute to the economy by renting shops from South Africans, providing jobs to locals and paying value added tax. Foreigners that run businesses employ more South Africans than South African-run businesses do,” the statement added.
The statement further said that while some foreign nationals engage in crime, most do not and that South Africans perpetrate a vast majority of crime in the country.
“This is acknowledged in Statistics South Africa’s National Victims of Crime Survey released in 2014 which shows that 95% of the 30, 000 households surveyed said crime in their area was committed by South Africans. Only 5% said that crime in their area was caused by foreigners”.
Africa’s problems can only be resolved by a committed crop of leaders who do not blame the media for exposing wrong things in their societies, but leaders who are able to stand up, face challenges, and come up with solutions. After all, Africa is one big country!