Africans Behaving Badly

Richard Moleofe | Thursday April 30, 2015 17:23

Attacks on Africans by other people of Negro descent are a real cause for concern, particularly when it happens in this day and age.

I grew up in the era of the Cold War and at the time Africa was awash with dictators who were hell bent on terrorising their local populations. What comes to mind in the endless list of these men are Emperor Bukhasa of the Central African Republic, Mobutu se Seseko of the Democratic Republic of Congo and Idi Amin of Uganda. The list is endless. Mind you, the role of dictatorship in Africa has been exclusive to men.

I am reminded of the acts of Bukhasa when he slaughtered several school children for a crime of not wearing school uniforms. When our school teacher shared this with us we just couldn’t comprehend it. Idi Amin specialised in the slaughter of men who dared oppose his rule in whatever manner. And did you know that dictators are very extravagant in their spending? This is true; they would normally focus their attention in recurrent expenditures of all sorts while ignoring the development of their own people. Mobutho was such a dictator. He flew a hair dresser from New York every two weeks to come and do a haircut. What? Weren’t there any barbers in the Congo? The Congo has to this day exported barbers and medical doctors in large numbers.

Within the current era, it seems dictators are slowly becoming extinct and that’s a lot of good news for Africa and the world. During the Cold War, the people were subdued and the best term to describe their behaviour throughout the continent would be “docile”. This docile behaviour seems to have been turned around completely and we now see Africans behaving badly. The recent attacks by Africans on other Africans shows how the African population has increasingly become violent. This has happened in South Africa but truth be said; violence has engulfed all of Africa and that includes Botswana as well. I guess if it was a white man writing this opinion, most Africans would not even read further than the second paragraph.

Botswana is acclaimed as one of the most peaceful countries in the world and it will seem so until you arrive here. One Ugandan doctor arrived here some years ago after being recruited to join the Ministry of Health. He was really perplexed by fact that almost all our houses here are surrounded by high security walls and imbedded with alarm systems.

As we have seen in the rest of Africa, unrest is the order of the day. The most significant turmoil points are currently in South Africa with the current xenophobic unrests and Nigeria with the Boko Haram problem. I cannot traverse the whole of Africa to try and make a case in order to reinforce my argument. I will only deal with Botswana, Nigeria and South Africa in that order.

Botswana’s security issues are centred on the fact that there is a growing gap between the poor and the rich. The wealth gap has created a lot of problems that most of us are oblivious to but they are growing from strength to strength. The growing levels of unemployment among our youth are an internal security threat. We have to realise that the growing number of the unemployed youths are a time bomb. It is frustrating for a number of these young people to exert all their energies in getting a qualification that cannot get them into the job market. It’s frustrating and unless something is done in earnest and in haste, our youths will one day move on to a level of adopting an insurrection. God forbid!

Truth be told- Botswana has moved far ahead of many African countries in terms of the economy. But of late these gains have been eroded by the growing levels of unemployment and our government doesn’t seem to notice it.

The three countries under discussion are all blessed with an abundance of mineral and oil wealth. There is certainly no sufficient reason for any one of these countries to not do enough to empower their youths in a meaningful economic sense. Regardless of the current state of our economy, we still can do a great deal of work in redeeming the situation. In as much as I am not an economist, it would make a lot of economic sense to borrow money from elsewhere in the world to invest in our people.

Botswana’s government has already done a lot in the area of human resource development in as far as empowering her youth with education. Most of Botswana’s development and recurrent budget goes to education and this is a good sign that the country is building a firm foundation in human resource development. However, that is far from sufficient.

Nigerians were elated and over the moon with the announcement that they are now the leading economy in Africa reducing South Africa to second position. There is very little to show for this achievement and the man on the street has not seen the clear manifestation of this economic achievement. Even though Boko Haram has now become more of a religious group of Islamic zealots, their initial objective was to protest the economic imbalances that the country is experiencing. Indeed they had a genuine reason to protest for but it is unfortunate that it has taken this turn into violence.

It was very unfortunate that when this insurrection started, the Nigerian government ignored it. The coming of this violent behaviour should have been noticed much earlier but government chose to ignore it.

The Nigerians in the northern part of the country were calling for a balance in the country’s development and the call was somewhat ignored. But the northerners only have themselves to blame. For the past half a century of Nigeria’s years of independence, they have had a lot of generals from the north ruling that land. They should have addressed these issues in full.

Goodluck Jonathan should have smelt a rat when they started calling him names. When they started calling him “Badluck” Jonathan, it was sufficient reason to start bringing his popularity under the spotlight because obviously people were getting fed up with the way he was running the economy.

It was the same thing with Jerry John Rawlings. When he came to power, the people affectionately called Junior Jesus for his initials, JJ. When Rawlings took power as a young Flight Lieutenant, he severed ties with the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. The previous government had gone into a structural adjustment arrangement that the Ghanaians detested. He was seen as a hero when he repealed this agreement. When Rawlings could not drive the economy forward the people were not amused. They immediately called him Junior Judas, the traitor.

South Africa has not learnt a lesson from its forerunners, Botswana and Nigeria. The criminal behaviour of many youths in South Africa is a clear manifestation of economic frustration. The unemployment rate in that country is totally unacceptable. The killing of foreign nationals has just been made an unacceptable scapegoat.

For any African government, this should be known that if those in power are not interested in empowering their people in a meaningful economic way, Africans will continue to behave badly. The sight of Africans killing each other should never have a place in this continent. This will only come to an end if rulers take the responsibility of bridging the gap between the rich and the poor.

Richard Moleofe is a Retired Military Officer (Distinguished Service Medal)