South Africa, we are a racist, violent, and forgetful people. Let us repent.

Achille Mbembe delivered a deeply challenging Ruth First memorial lecture a few days ago. In the lecture he discusses South Africa, South Africans, and our treatment of African sisters and brothers from elsewhere on our common continent.

I was recently at a conference where a group of African colleagues addressed South Africans. The gist of their reprimand was that we have become a racist, Afro-phobic, Afro-pessimistic, violent, nationalist, unkind and forgetful people.

I am ashamed... I am ashamed because I fear that it may be true! 

Here are a few quotes from the attached article. It is well worth the 5 minutes it will take to read. Read, reflect, repent, and then let us:

• Witness to the truth
• Live the alternative
• Bind up the broken
• Replace evil with good

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‘To the age of white racism has therefore succeeded the age of black on black racism. As Frantz Fanon foresaw not so long ago, South African forms of black nationalism are morphing into virulent forms of black-on-black racism. An ethno-racial project, this new form of black nationalism seeks to secede from Africa and its diasporas. It has forged for itself two enemies, an enemy it fears and envies (whiteness or white monopoly capital) and another it loathes and despises (Blacks from elsewhere). In a miraculous turn of events, it believes that xenophobia will create jobs, bring down crime and turn South Africa into an Eden on Earth. It has internalised white racism and has weaponised it against black non-citizens through the vicious use of State apparatuses.’

‘...former Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo recalls Nigeria’s contribution “to the struggle against colonialism in southern Africa and apartheid in South Africa”. It was, he says, “our obligatory duty to do so as Africans”. “We, as black people, believed and still believe that we would be second-class citizens in the world if we allowed any black people anywhere in the world, not to talk of Africa, to be treated as second-class citizens because of the colour of their skin”...’

‘South Africa will squander everything if, instead of consciously and dutifully fulfilling its obligation to humanity, it chooses to put its faith in the sheer and always precarious politics of power. For power to mean anything at all and for it to endure, it has to rest on firm moral foundations.’

Here is a link to the article that contains Mbembe's lecture: https://www.newframe.com/ruth-first-memorial-lecture-2019-achille-mbembe/