17 November 2020
Yvonne Mooka
• It’s a scramble for resources and reverse of democratic games-South African political analyst
The idea of nationalism has always been there across the world, according to popular South African political analyst and researcher at KwaZulu Natal University Lukhona Mnguni.
Speaking at a recent SADC virtual conference on ‘Changing the narrative of Migrants in SADC’ organised by Internews, Mnguni argued however that strategic cooperation and partnerships trumped the desire to do it alone. He says that it made political sense particularly for African countries because of the shared history of colonialism and the solidarity. “We saw organisations such as Organisation of African Unity and Frontline States formed to fight colonialism and apartheid in South Africa and Namibia,” he said.
One of the most talked about issues in the continent, which eventually made it into a book called ‘Ghana Must Go’ by Taiye Selasi in the late 1960s because of relational issues among African states was when people wanted those that were from other African countries to go back to their own countries in the name of ‘we are self-governing and we want our own countries to work for us. Then in the early 1980s, Nigeria was chasing Ghanaians citizens from their country.
“That fractured a lot of families because in the first place, it was not easy to go back. Ghanaians had domesticated themselves in Nigeria and had started families there. You’d find that one person from the family is going abroad to work to raise money so that those that were supposed to go back to Ghana would build new homes and this development reproduced new patterns of poverty as people went back home,” he said.
The African War in the 1990s where African countries such as Zimbabwe, Uganda and Rwanda migrated to other countries, created another pattern of movement of people who needed to be domesticated in new countries where they found themselves. “When you are new in a country, what influences the discourse is how people are treated. Generally, we don’t have massive refugee camps at least in the SADC region because we have an almost integrative way of settling for migrants. Generally, people move into communities and become one with them,” stated Mnguni.
Scramble for resources
Africa being a rich continent because natural resources such as soil is in a sad state as inhabitants do not benefit from it, according to Mnguni. His take is that the continent has an increasingly young population, making the scramble for resources even much more prevalent. “People are fighting for some stake into a future that they do not see as so bright,” he said. He explained that nationalism is not just across citizens of different countries. “If you go to some parts of KwaZulu Natal today, you will still find mothers there telling their daughters not to bring Amampondo men to their households because at some point in the 1970s, in some areas of KwaZulu Natal, there were significant clashes between AmaMpondo and people from KwaZulu Natal because the former were seen as migrating from the Eastern Cape into KZN and they were seen as taking opportunities and they were also viewed as low-class people and that discourse even continues today,” he said.
He however said that the unfortunate part about a country where there is ethnic nationalism within and among citizens, is that it becomes easy for people of such country to unite against those that do not come from there, especially those that are living in their community. “I have observed that as Africans, when we talk of foreigners, we mean fellow Africans, not Greeks, Portuguese or British citizens who are also doing businesses in the country,” he said.
He suggests that people must question what needs to happen at policy level so that socio-economic factors can be addressed and improved. He explains that one of the unanswered questions in SADC is that of development, making it a demographic burden.
Nationalism can only be tackled if policy-makers can open their eyes and work on power-imbalances, according to Mnguni, who also calls for an urgent advocacy for stronger democratic principles.
