Perspectives From South Africa

By

Abubakar Jika

[DURBAN, SOUTH AFRICA]

jikaab@yahoo.com

I am writing this from, Durban, South Africa. It is my preliminary impressions of South Africa which I hope to share with you. This is the first time I came to this country. It  is quite a shock to me, what can be aptly referred to as "culture shock". The surprises start from the plane. A wide-bodied Boeing 747. The crew were entire none-Africans. But they were courteous, friendly and efficient. The pilots were simply excellent. I did not know when we left the tarmac or when we landed :smooth, impeccable, quite. My colleague Balarabe Maikaba who was traveling with me could not help comparing it with the terrible take off and landing FREEDOM AIR subjected us from Kano to Lagos. Incidentally we read in South African newspapers the next day, that the same FREEDOM AIR caught fire at the Aminu Kano Airport the day after we left.

We landed at Johannesburg International Airport after 5hours 20 minutes of take off. We were simply bowled over by the airport. I have seen quite international airports in the United Kingdom, Spain, Germany, Saudi Arabia, Libya and Cuba. But Johannesburg International Airport takes the  icing on the cake. It is a real international airport. My colleague and I agreed that compared to what we saw, our own Murtala Mohammed Airport, gate way to Nigeria was more of a "bus station" There were ready, luxurious buses to convey us to the arrival terminals.

At the airport, it took us less than 15 minutes to get cleared, including our baggage. Nobody demanded any bribe. The customs and immigration were friendly and courteous. There were conspicuous notices that invite you to lodge a complain to higher authorities if you are dissatisfied with the services offered to you at the counters. In fact they put telephone numbers that you can call to lodge your complaints. What baffled us was these were blacks like me and my country men and yet they were transparent: they needed no war to be transparent.

From the Johannesburg Airport we were reconnected to Durban Airport. This took us less that 30 minutes to accomplish. Every thing works at the airport: escalators, conveyor belts, computers. Indeed they have computers that scan luggage even before your own arrivals that nobody ask you to open your bags. No manual fidgeting with your bags, when you had to open your bags, and they peep in your dresses, including ladies as we went through at the Lagos Airport. It was quite an experience.

Greater shocks await us at the Port City of Durban: the home of venerated Sheikh Ahmad Deedat. The infrastructures are first world standards. The buildings were simply outstanding. I understand why it was so difficult to demolish apartheid in South Africa.

The buildings were simply European standards and architecture. I thought I was in England. No difference at all. The streets were constructed with top grade asphalts as they did in Europe.

I could not locate any difference either in designs or quality of materials used with the German roads and streets I saw in Hamburg. The major roads, and they are uncountable were either six lane or eight lanes, some even ten lanes. The drainages were all covered. You do not see electric poles hanging or telephone poles dangling as we have them in Nigeria. As for the weather it is simply outstanding. It is now their autumn and I understanding the winter is approaching. For the two of us coming from the Dept of Mass Communications, Bayero University, Kano with the Kano heat you can only imagine. Of course you do not need air conditioners at the moment here, though all the hotels provide for them.

Life in South Africa is rule by computers. Virtually all the shops are computerised. You shop through credit cards. he filling stations are operated through computers. And wait a minute: no queues in filling stations. You hardly see three cars in any filling station at all. South Africa has no known oil. So you wonder why Nigeria should ever lack fuel. You recall the military era when governors supervise sharing fuel in government houses and you feel a shame. Even now Obasanjo, a regular visitor here cannot guarantee fuel to his own people and you feel sad and ashamed.

The greatest miracle: electricity is constant here. It does not even blink. Nobody recalls any day that electricity ever trip off here in Durban. There was simply no time that such a thing happen in living memory, according to residents I interviewed for this write up. Electricity is constant and is taken for granted. Water is also constant. Any time you open the taps they run. Water is again taken for granted 24 hours. Obasanjo is a regular face here before his imprisonment and after he became president. He knows these as facts that cannot be denied. Yet he promised us that he will fix NEPA within six months and we gave him the benefit of doubt. After spending billions of our money NEPA is now worse. Yet not even a courtesy of apology to Nigerians.

Maikaba told me he heard over the BBC a day before I wrote this article that Maiduguri had no electricity supply now for 21 days and so the water machines cannot move and people are now desperate, running to bushes to share the little in the bushes with animals. I also learn that Kano has no electricity supply now for 10 days. Yet Kwankwaso, my friend, is said to be campaigning for four more years for Obasanjo along with Kachallah of Borno state. It is even a shock the Obasanjo is dreaming for another term. If he is in South Africa the fellow would have long resigned and apologise for misleading us.

Now to the University of Natal, here in Durban. Every thing is international standards. Indeed I was told they started admitting blacks only in 1990. A Nigerian Ph.D. student told me this. I could not independently verify this at the moment. But all the facilities and infrastructures we have been reading in the first world are here. The entire University is linked with computers (LAN)). From the gate to offices to the Library are computerised. You cannot gain access any where, not even to enter the University unless you are registered and has been accessed into the system. Everybody has a number: lecturers and students. This enable you to access the entire facilities without which you are out.

Of course computers are every where. Internet is 24 hours and wait: free. You can spend 24 hour browsing the internet, typing and sending messages and receiving messages for free. Every body has rudimentary knowledge of computers and the internet. You just have to. You cannot use their libraries or some of their lectures without computers. Some lectures are through the net. There are no business centres where you give your materials for somebody to type for you.

I initially asked of a business centre. It took some explaining. Nobody seems to know what I was even looking for. It was Maikaba that told me he saw one small sign some were that invites typing. But the cost was so exorbitant:N200 per page it was not worth it. So I had to learn how to type on the computers and access the net within 24 hours. Compared to what we left in Nigeria my colleague Maikaba said we were running,  to use his own words "makarantan allo" (itinerant almajirai system that uses slates).

Again my colleague, who is incidentally from Kano gave me quite a laugh the first day. He was so bowled over by what he saw that he declared that the Kano claims of "ko da me kazo an fika" (whatever you come with in Kano, you will meet more than you) as a bad joke. That Kano which boast of only the Bank of the North as a high rise building is not up to a suburb of Durban. In fact virtually every street and they are hundreds, have more that 20 very high-rise buildings.

The conclusion we reached is that we are not serious in Nigeria. We should stop deceiving ourselves that we are giant of Africa. Nobody seems to take us serious with such claims here. Nigerian community is quite huge and strong here. The Igbos as always lead the pack, followed by Yorubas. Northerners are negligible, as always. Igbos are the third controllers of trade and property here in South Africa, after the whites, and coloureds, including Indians. This is not without its huge cost. The indigenous blacks resent this emergent Igbo economic elite. Matters are not helped by their linkage to crime, drugs and frauds especially credit scams.

The impression here is that Nigerians are criminals and fraudulent. Moreso as the affluent ones who live extremely high lifestyles appear not to have visible source of incomes. There are some Nigerians especially academics in the Universities, largely led by as usual the Yorubas who are doing honest, infact great jobs. Most of the Universities here rely on Nigerian academics some as high as Deans of Faculties. I run into one of them, highly respected who taught me in Bayero University, Kano in 1981,Professor Matt Mogekwu. He is a Dean in North Western University here in Durban. We met during one of the endless seminars international academics are known for.

The picture is not all rosy, eldorado here in South Africa. One of the sad stories is the huge disparities between the rich and the poor. It is so alarming. The crisis is not racial and the lines are not racially define these days. Since the collapse of apartheid, many blacks have made it, particularly the politicians and their supporters. Some are now controllers of conglomerates and as rich as the richest whites.

Closely link to this is the apparent and indeed obvious failure to economically empower the black majority. From what I saw, the elites have cornered the empowering machinery and as usual hoarded these to their benefits. What you therefore have is a tiny class of whites, coloured and black elites guzzling every thing and the vast majority wallow in tragic poverty.

The blacks are politically free, but the majority are under economic bondage due to grinding poverty. There are no jobs, no business for the vast majority. This is traceable to apartheid which denied them education. You cannot empower an illiterate and you cannot provide him white colour job. To worsen matters unlike the First World that has provision for social security, none to my knowledge exist in South Africa.

This now brings me to the next sad story of South Africa: crime. Too much crime around here. From petty thefts to armed robberies, killings to gang wars. The insecurity is too much. I believe there is a correlation between this unprecedented proclivity to crime and the poverty of the blacks and failure by the system to empower them. Life is cheap here. For two Rands which is equivalent to less than N40 you can get knifed or even shot. You have to be careful .You have to avoid dark alleys or talking to strangers or asking directions. The blacks, our own black people are the worse. It is better to first ask for directions from a white, followed by Indians and if you have to then blacks. But after asking keep watching your back, so you don't get knifed.

I understand and infact appreciate Mandela's decision not to seek for a second term. The situation was so bad and the expectations too high and his options too limited to have fundamentally alter the realities on ground. Unlike Obasanjo he was frank with himself and he saw no need to perpetuate himself. He was also not greedy. I doubt if he has any money in his own personal account. He saw no ethnic or tribal agenda to pursue beyond setting in motion the process of reconciliation. He is a great man, concern with great issues. He was not mundane to be sniffing around which University lecturer sell which handout or sleep with which student. He also does not fight his parliament or impose leader on the ANC.

I think we should stop comparing what are incomparable. South Africa is a First world in a Third world. Its leaders are first class leaders facing daunting task. They are not tribal agenda setters, who carry their deputies as hand bags. Let me mention one indelible impression of my first few days in Durban. President Thabo Mbeki came for a function in our neighborhood, no roads were closed. No sirens blowing fleet of cars. Actually he goes with only three cars, including the one he uses. The day I left Kano our own Obasanjo sneaked into town to commensurate with the Governor over the EAS plane crash, a couple of days after his Vice Atiku was stoned in Kano, roads were blocked from the airport. Such is the difference in leadership and vision between Mandela and Mbeki and Obasanjo and Atiku.

Abubakar Jika writes from the University of Natal, Durban, South Africa.