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Xenophobia In South Africa, A Symptom Of African "Misculture" By Akinbinu Olusola
Anything whose purpose is not defined at introduction will have the primary challenge of abuse. Human life is not exempted. When a child, even a race suddenly finds herself in the middle of the wild ocean of life, where everyone is just busy with how to acquire the next $1or it's equivalent, everyone in the impatience at the drive for aesthetic competition. At that point, it would be too difficult to ask one's the question of purpose (Life purpose), If this had not been determined before the time. The values built into Man and animals from young are what is reflected easily when they grow. Culture is like natural restraint and command in the mind of both man and animals. It is either they are deliberately and carefully cultured from young or left to pick their attitudes and judgments from the wild. Even Lions are tamed from young by Zoo Scientists, how come humans lost life values?
Webster's New Encyclopedic dictionary defines Culture as "the act of developing the intellectual and moral facilities especially by education", it defines it further as "the integrated pattern of human knowledge, belief and behavior that depends upon man’s capacity for learning and transmitting knowledge to succeeding generation".
The sudden belief by South Africans that killing of black foreigners in their country is the answer to their challenge of Unemployment a problem of "social misculture". How did they arrive at that resolve?
Zulu King, Goodwill Zwelithini said it openly that African Foreigners should leave South Africa, for their citizens to get job, as he claimed to be defending South Africans as his progenitors did. Another self-acclaimed leader of the wild killing, who identified himself as Sergeant Mabutubutu Masekosuma Kongugu, sent out a wild Video broadcast, justifying his actions and promising to do more. In his own words from the Video "...you don't know how we survive! You don't know what it is for a fellow black person to be here unemployed". Both the King and the Sergeant have same reason. EMPLOYMENT, maybe it breaks down further into poverty due to Unemployment. But let's come back to Employment. Can it actually be justified that it is immigrants that cause unemployment in South Africa? It is unjustifiable because there is no country in the world, even the largest Industrial countries which doesn't have its own share of Unemployment. If the statistic is taken of the number of unemployed indigenes in South Africa, it would obviously be more than the number of migrant workers. Many migrants even have no job in South Africa.
Getting a job anywhere today is competitive, especially now when higher skills and intellectual commitment is demanded for Job designs that used to be "ordinary". It takes greater skills of brand representation and customer service to even sell at a Super Store today than what any school leaver does in the 1980's. Can it be true that Job hirers are preferring foreigners? Is it because of their skills and commitment against the local National?. These are the questions. Whichever way it goes, the local Nationals should ordinarily have the advantage over foreigners, not even just because of their language, into nations and understanding of the local terrain. In all of these, if they are still disadvantaged at competing for the preferences of the Job Hirers, then killing of other Nationals CANNOT be an answer to their problem of UNEMPLOYMENT as claimed, but looking inwards to address why their Nationals are not presenting themselves reliably enough to win confidence of Job Hirers.
The problem goes far further into what exactly we called education, how do we define Philosophy of life for children in Africa? How do we make them value life, how do we teach them to understand and appreciate mutual co-existence and healthy social competition?. So long as we fail, or continue to fail in this area, we are digging are very large ocean for Confusion and Civil wars of all sorts to swim conveniently. We are killing those we refuse to Educate. |