LACKING LEADERSHIP AND ACCOUNTABILTY IN AFRICA

 

The criticism about the violence waged against the foreign nationals in South Africa has been easily dumped by sister countries as a South African problem, how true? In 1994 to date, the South African borders has been flooding with foreigners leaving their countries to settle and for life-improvement opportunities. The borders since then has had security challenges and control of foreigners entering the country. There has been reports of undocumented illegal refugees entering the country’s loose border gates. Though majority of African countries pride themselves of independence from western forces, it has been a struggle to nightmare of the ongoing civil wars of black on black killings. The new South Africa had just tasted democracy and looking to improve the lives of its previously oppressed by the apartheid regime and to the infra-structure of their areas. The process of improving the lives of South Africans hasn’t been easy, they have found themselves having to compete with foreign nationals as they have left their countries to settle to South Africa. The deteriorated economy has exposed this burden as people lost jobs due to closing companies.

The violence against foreign nationals can’t be labelled with excuses to make it look legitimate, that would be plain disregard of human rights. The violence has been a build-up of ignored governance and leadership issues in the whole of Africa not just one host country. The African leaders has been giving a blind eye to this growing problem while they continued with their lives. The violence in which the African leaders themselves imposed in their people has compelled them to seek refuge in other countries in big numbers, and South Africa being a major host of these persecuted Africans by Africans. These African leaders have distanced themselves from the problem as usual, not taking accountability to the basic problems which led to this present situation. These fellow African brothers didn’t leave their homes by choice, but because of problematic governance and leadership inadequacy by those in authority. These countries are headed by black governments who should be putting their people’s rights and needs as a priority, not passing their responsibility soulily to South Africa, who economy weakens by day. Our sister countries have been ignoring the economy strain and pressure South Africa and its people been subjected to as a result of having to compete for resources and opportunities. No country in African history has had to bear the burden of African diaspora majority but South Africa. It has now shown the impossibilities of its existence overtime that assistance is needed from the African countries to meet South Africa half-way instead of taking the easy way out of criticism. Where is unity in African leadership if one country must bear the burdens of other countries whose leadership fallacy affected the lively-hood of its people. Shouldn’t this be shared responsibility by all involved countries to find solution instead of escalating a readily critical situation?

South African government and its leadership has never in any day in history persecuted foreign nationals. They have never engaged negatively in issues of xenophobic attacks. The socioeconomic issues in South Africa are calling for attention to all involved nations in order to find amicable solution for all. South Africa can no longer stands on its own in absorbing the challenges of Africa. The violence in which is heavily criticised and labelled xenophobic didn’t start in South Africa only, but each African country contributed partly in it directly or indirectly. To justify the violence as South African retaliation against foreign nationals is ignorance to the problem in which all know its socioeconomic and therefore won’t bother to mention the name lest get implicated. Each African leader who campaigned and stood for presidency must live up to the responsibility and not look for excuses to avoid the problem. The violence in South Africa didn’t   emanate from xenophobic behaviour, but by African leaders who failed to live up to protecting and respecting the rights of its people which caused them to seek refuge elsewhere in big numbers. The debate should be to find a solution by all African leaders to solve this problem, pointing fingers is not leadership but following. If a leader can’t unite a country, he has no business leading.