Xenophobia Africa’s latest threat – Financial Times

According to the Financial Times, xenophobia in Africa is in danger of severely compromising the economies of its constituent countries. This outside view of the continent argues that an alarming new Nationalism is edging out a long-standing Pan-Africanism that acknowledged a common colonial history and interdependent post-liberation future. Instead, the two economic giants, Nigeria and South Africa are at loggerheads while Zambia and Zimbabwe have also expressed their intense displeasure at the killing of foreigners on South African soil. – Chris Bateman.By Thulasizwe Sithole.The world is fretful about the disintegration of relations between African countries as violent xenophobia starts damaging local economies and future internal and global trading prospects..___STEADY_PAYWALL___.According to the Financial Times, the shared colonial experience and historic Balkanisation of the continent has given way to violence upon one another's citizens and property after several influential recent leaders of member countries had made significant progress in building unity towards a powerful continental trading block..The epicentre of the xenophobia, South Africa, has seen the emergence of various forms, from the torching of long-haul trucks driven by non-unionised foreign labourers in the Cape Town area, to the killing of informal foreign traders in the Gauteng region, the tally now having reached a dozen, with fear and attempts to return to their countries of origin ubiquitous..The anti-South African backlash is widespread and intense, ranging from SA trucks attacked in Mozambique, a Zambian radio station banning South African songs, to President Cyril Ramaphosa being booed at Robert Mugabe's funeral in Zimbabwe..Nigeria has withdrawn its High Commissioner and is co-operating with an international relief NGO with a view to an air-repatriation of its threatened countrymen..The FT reports a former South African deputy minister of police, Mr Bongani Mkongi claiming that 80% of Hillbrow residents were now foreigners and that South Africans were 'surrendering their own cities to foreign nationals.".It juxtaposes this with Nelson Mandela's 18-day tour of African countries to thank them for their role in hosting and protecting ANC activists shortly after he was elected president in 1994. The absence of police during some xenophobic attacks is also highlighted, the imputation being that the violence is somehow being condoned at senior levels..The FT concludes that for the intra-regional project to work, African nations will have to take a liberal attitude towards the movement of people as well as goods and services, noting that fifty-four nations have committed to a free trade area with an output of $3.4trn in which tariffs on 90% of goods would be cut to zero.

Xenophobia Africa’s latest threat – Financial Times

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