Afrophobia: what goes around comes around

By Bishop Dave Chikosi

“Friends, on an occasion such as this, we should, perhaps, start from the beginning. So, let me begin. I am an African! – Thabo Mbeki 

Sometime in 1995 a pastor friend of mine invited me to Johannesburg, South Africa to speak at his church. After my sermon to a packed auditorium of around 1500 congregants, my friend walked me outside to meet and greet the people.

As we mingled with the crowds outside, I was taken aback when a group of youths asked me, “So pastor, you are from Africa? How are things going there?”

My host looked uncomfortable at the question and tried to redirect the conversation. I wasn’t sure why. This was just a case of fellow Africans failing to express themselves clearly in the Queen’s language. English is a second language. I was sure what the youths really meant to ask was “How are the rest of our African brothers and sisters up north doing?”

On our way to his home, my host apologized on the youths’ behalf and hoped I had not been offended by their question. He explained that under apartheid, South Africans had been programmed to believe that their country was not only fundamentally different from the rest of Africa, but that it was, in fact, not part of Africa. It was rather a European colonial outpost in the same vein as Australia or Canada.

I was flabbergasted. I had never heard such drivel in my life.

Thinking like Africans not allowed here

Fast forward to October 2013. President Jacob Zuma is speaking at the ANC’s Manifesto Forum at Wits University. When asked about the wisdom and logic of the e-tolling system that his government was about to implemented, he responded: “We can’t think like Africans in Africa. This is Johannesburg. It’s not some national road in Malawi.”

Needless to say the government and people of Malawi were not amused.

But Mr. Zuma’s “I am not an African from Africa” speech stand in stark contrast to the famous “I Am an African” speech given by Thabo Mbeki in Cape Town on May 8, 1996. Mr. Mbeki’s speech is one of the most rousing speeches to ever come out of Africa and has been compared to Dr. Martin Luther King Jnr’s “I Have a Dream” speech.

Mbeki opened with the words “I am an African.” He then went on to affirm our human interconnectedness from Cape to Cairo:

My mind and my knowledge of myself is formed by the victories that are the jewels in our African crown, the victories we earned from Isandhlwana to Khartoum, as Ethiopians and as the Ashanti of Ghana, as the Berbers of the desert

While Mbeki affirmed our common African-ness, Mr. Zuma’s speech symbolized and captured an Afrophobia that has now been fueled by King Goodwill Zwelithini’s parochial “foreigners must pack their bags and go home.” It appears King Goodwill has very little goodwill for his fellow African brothers.

Afrophobia, zero sum game and scarcity 

“Afrophobia” is defined as the fear and denigration of Africa and its peoples, characterized by a better-than-thou attempt to dissociate from all things Africans in favor of some perceived superior socio-cultural matrix.

The Afrophobia we have seen in South Africa is driven partly by this better-than-thou complex, (which is nothing but an attempt to conceal one’s own feelings of inferiority). But it is also driven by a “zero sum game” mentality.

We are all familiar with zero sum game theory. It forms the basis of most of our board and ball games. Only one person can win a game of chess or checkers. Only one team can win a game of basketball, football or soccer. It’s always a win-lose scenario. It’s never win-win.

A zero sum game in national politics and economics means that the advancement of one group/race/nation/society necessitates the decline of the other. Only one competing ethnic group or community can win, succeed or prosper. It’s impossible for two competing sides to advance at the same time. There are no “win-win” situations. Either one group wins and the other lose or vice versa.

The zero sum game is in turn based on the concept of scarcity. Those committing atrocities in South Africa believe in scarcity. They believe there is not enough resources for everyone in the country, and so foreigners please “pack your bags and go home” to wherever you came from.

For such people life is a zero sum game. There is only a finite amount of jobs, opportunities and resources and foreigners are taking these things away from the locals. If only foreigners could leave then South Africans will have jobs, resources and plenty of money. But how true is that?

Did God fail to plan?

If you are an industrious person and have faith in God for whom “all things are possible” can another human hinder you and keep you poor? Are our resources, given by an infinite God, really finite? If they are what does that say about God and His ability to plan and provide for His good creation? Did He get His budget projections wrong? Did He fail to forecast that in 2015 there would be around 7 billion people on the planet who need enough food and natural resources for sustenance?

As Christians we don’t believe any of the above propositions. We believe God has made adequate provisions for whatever population levels will be here right up to the Second Coming of Christ.

No-one needs to go without food, shelter or clothes in this world. The fact that this is happening around the world is not an indictment on God. Rather it is a testimony to our spiritual ignorance, human selfishness as well as poor government delivery systems.

Creating abundance 

Life does not have to be a zero sum game. No-one has to lose or go without. Everyone can win at the game of life. We all have a God-given ability to be creative. Unemployment may be high but because I am made in the image and likeness of God, I can be creative.

I can use my faith as well as my mind and physical energy to create abundance for myself.

In the divine economy revealed in the Bible, abundance is the watchword. Supply is unlimited. There is no scarcity in God and life is not a zero sum game. If you are willing to work (smarter not harder), give to God and to charitable causes (sow seed) as well as exercise your faith, you will prosper. There is no system of economics that can trump divine principles.

Hacking people to death and attacking those who seem to be doing better than you is the quickest avenue to the poor house. You reap what you sow. You can’t go around tire necklacing other human beings and expect to get away with it. Karma is a ruthless mistress. She will find you. And if she doesn’t catch up with you, God will pick up the slack.

What goes around comes around. The evil that men to unto others will one day be done unto them. A boomerang always returns to the one who threw it. It may move around in circles, but it will eventually find its target. Every dastardly act committed under the sun will get its comeuppance one day – in this life and in that to come.

I close with Thabo Mbeki:

Among us prowl the products of our immoral and amoral past – killers who have no sense of the worth of human life, rapists who have absolute disdain for the women of our country, animals who would seek to benefit from the vulnerability of the children, the disabled and the old . . .

All this I know and know to be true because I am an African!

Because of that, I am also able to state this fundamental truth that I am born of a people who are heroes and heroines.

I am born of a people who would not tolerate oppression.

I am of a nation that would not allow that fear of death, torture, imprisonment, exile or persecution should result in the perpetuation of injustice.

The great masses who are our mother and father will not permit that the behavior of the few results in the description of our country and people as barbaric.

Bishop Dave Chikosi can be reached by email at [email protected]. His written and video materials can be viewed at his blog http://davechikosi.blogspot.com