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My Turn with Tichaone Zindoga
Well, the Afrophobic violence in South Africa is slowly dying down, thanks to the worldwide condemnation that the barbaric acts, and to an extent, the government of that country has received.

Although world powers, save for a few that issued travel warnings and Nigeria’s diplomatic tiff, have come short of publicly slating the South African government for its reaction to the violence, one can bet that stringent actions by the government were due if this embarrassing episode were to draw itself longer than its unwelcome flare-up.

We can only hope that we will not see a repeat of it in future, what with the national soul-searching that is now underway in that country.

But then the causes of xenophobia are so deep-seated and may take years to dismantle being a product of a unique psychological, political, economic and social milieu.

That is why even when some South Africans were urging tolerance and were marching for peace, they ran the risk of being hacked down by machete-wielding thugs.

The same way moderate Hutus were targeted during the genocide in Rwanda.

Those who committed the egregious acts in the past few weeks and in the past years dating back to 2008, at least, and have never been brought to book are likely to do it again.

And their children, too, who witnessed and participated in the violent acts.

We saw them in the pictures and videos.

The culture of violence is likely to get entrenched, unless something drastic happens, which we hope will.

We become sceptical, though, when leaders seem to give caveats and grudging admissions of the appalling state of affairs like telling the world that all countries with populations in South Africa are part of the problem too because there wouldn’t be immigrants to be hacked down by thugs and criminals in South Africa.

And the implication?

They should go back where they came from, which is what the thugs and their commander-in-chief, Goodwill Zwelithini were saying!

But we remain hopeful that the spirit of brotherhood and reasonableness, and economic sense, even for the barely literate, shall prevail so we find lasting peace with ourselves in our African space.

Enter the lunatic fringe

Now, following weeks of righteous anger against what was happening in South Africa, one may have noted that on various platforms of Zimbabwe’s discourse, anger is being now slowly being channelled to the Government of Zimbabwe and President Mugabe.

This is being amplified every day.

Not to worry, though, it’s the usual lunatic fringe.

It is this same lunatic fringe that has saturated the social media space with its bilious attacks on Government and the ruling party, such bile being born out of dismal failure and helplessness as an alternative by the opposition whose face is Morgan Tsvangirai and the MDC.

Now, the preoccupation is to blame President Mugabe for xenophobic attacks in South Africa.

We are told that were it not for him thugs would not be burning and necklacing and stoning and robbing Africans in South Africa.

We are willing to engage the lunatic fringe on this one.

First of all, is President Mugabe responsible for what even authorities in South Africa admit as national anger?

More specifically, did he create the evil of apartheid that has left inequalities that are so glaring and frustrating and driving people mad and feeling inferior?

On that score did President Mugabe provide the tyres and petrol and machetes used to brutalise innocents?

And if South Africa were not an angry nation, which is not of President Mugabe’s making, would they be butchering foreigners, and African others only for that matter?

And surely South Africa is not the first country to have immigrants and refugees is it, and if so, why do other nations not behave in such a barbaric manner?

The second point to note is the overemphasis of Zimbabwean presence in South Africa.

The exaggeration of numbers is for pure political propaganda -and every reasonable person knows that.

Credible studies have debunked the myth of Zimbabwe having “between one and two million” Zimbabweans being in South Africa which is clearly a figment of imagination for propaganda purposes calculated first to paint a picture of failure in Zimbabwe and secondly to bear down on SA authorities to aid regime change in the country.

The Forced Migration Studies Programme & Musina Legal Advice Office produced a special report entitled, “Fact or Fiction? Examining Zimbabwean Cross-Border Migration into South Africa”.

One of the claims it debunked was that there are “millions of Zimbabweans flooding into South Africa”.

It noted that “commentators have speculated on the number of Zimbabweans in the country, producing ‘estimates’ ranging from 1,2-3 million persons”.

It called this a “demographic guesswork” and blamed the media which it laid out as playing up these claims based on no or unnamed “official” sources.

The paper noted that, “Reporters undoubtedly face considerable pressure to provide figures to support their research”.

Newspapers made assertions without clarifying sources; failed to reconcile or acknowledge conflicting sources; neglected differences between estimates from the same sources and neglected conflicts with estimates published by their own publication.

In short, the paper threw the bush statistics away that say there are 1,2 to two million Zimbabweans in South Africa.

Blame it on Tsvangirai

Which leads to the next point.

If people are to blame anyone for what has happened economically to Zimbabwe leading to the alleged mass exodus from the country, why not start with Morgan Tsvangirai, leader of the opposition who is on record as urging South Africa itself to cut fuel and electricity to Zimbabwe which sanctions would collapse the economy and inevitably cause people to flee she country?

The records are there, in audio-visual, too.

He is also on record as celebrating the suffering of the people gloating that they would suffer more.

Now, why should anybody blame President Mugabe, who was fighting these treasonous designs not the devil Tsvangirai himself?

In fact, the people of Zimbabwe must be thankful that it is the good relations that President Mugabe has with South African leaders which saved this country.

South Africa could well have heeded Tsvangirai and much worse would have joined the Western putsch in Zimbabwe.

Or what happened in Libya, with South Africa and Nigeria’s support.

Now, the greatest sin that Tsvangirai committed against the people of Zimbabwe including and most particularly those that are being killed and brutalised in South Africa, are the sanctions that Tsvangirai’s allies imposed on the country.

They said it would make the economy scream.

The economy screamed, just as the doctor had ordered, and people left this screaming economy for greener pastures, or so they hoped, like South Africa.

We all heard Eddie Cross saying that the country would crash and burn.

Nelson Chamisa was to tell us that the MDC could walk over dead bodies in its march to State House.

We all saw how American ambassadors urged their capital to “stay the course” in tightening pressure on the Zimbabwe Government by maintaining sanctions which caused people to suffer and die including from the cholera outbreak of 2008.

Americans are the hand-holders of Tsvangirai?

Now, he is the one who should be blamed for the necklacing of our people in South Africa.

A fallacious argument is that President Mugabe’s alleged mismanagement of the economy led to the scattering of his people.

This is obvious obfuscation as it does not tell us how he became such a bad manager and Western foe only when he started empowering his people through land reform and implementing projects for economic and empowerment through indigenisation.

In other words, what South Africans are crying for now, namely land and jobs, President Mugabe has laid a foundation for, and provided, albeit inviting punishment from the West.

He must be applauded for being a visionary rather than a short-sighted leader.