WE, in the village, have never had illusions about who we are with regards to our identity; we are black, brown people, we are Africans and beyond our borders are our brothers and sisters.
And as the 44th SADC Summit roars into life, I feel it is imperative that I remind participants that we one people.
I want to remind them that it is not by mere coincidence or an accident of history that violence has been perpetrated on people of colour and never on foreigners of Caucasian extraction.
The pattern of this black-on-black violence is consistent enough to label it as Afrophobia, a kind of self-hatred which is directed outwards towards the perceived black other.
In order to understand the kind of Afrophobia which haunts many of our communities across the region and continent, we have to go back in history and look at how black slaves were divided and controlled by the white slave master.
One of the strategists on ‘the making of a slave’ is Willie Lynch.
It is common knowledge that whenever he delivered lectures on how to make a perfect and loyal slave, he always kicked off by asking his white slave-owning audience to list all the differences among their slaves — ‘from age and height to gender, size, hair colour and status and to capitalise on these’.
In 1772 Lynch went on to say: “Now that you have a list of differences, I shall assure you that distrust is stronger than trust and envy, stronger than adulation, respect or admiration.
“The black slaves after receiving this indoctrination shall carry on and become self-fuelling and self-generating for hundreds of years, maybe thousands.”
Lynch as a name has become a verb in the English language precisely because most of Lynch’s evil ideas on how to divide and rule slaves for life have been adopted lock, stock and barrel by capitalists on a global scale.
Apartheid or white supremacy as doctrines manufactured differences among blacks, exaggerated them and dramatised them endlessly in order to keep all blacks divided and weak and, therefore, not a threat to white hegemony.
The existence of tribes in Africa became a base from which to launch apartheid and many other forms of racism!
In fact, apartheid went further and created bantustans based on tribes, all in an attempt to divide Africans, to weaken them and rule them for eternity.
According to Professor Rothney Tshaka of the University of South Africa (UNISA): “Whiteness has been the norm for centuries and does not need to explain itself as black identity does”.
The list of crimes allegedly committed by immigrants from Africa is a long one.
Apparently such a list does not exist for immigrants from Hungary, Greece, Serbia, Italy, Germany, France Britain, Poland, Turkey and Holland.
And the reason immigrants from all these European countries are regarded by locals in a positive light is simple.
Whites are regarded by most locals as potential employers and/or benefactors by virtue of the colour of their skin.
In other words, most indigenes regard themselves as potential beneficiaries from the mere presence of white immigrants.
The violence directed against this black other is part of what Frantz Fanon called an inward directed implosion taking place in black communities; an implosion which, if left to grow, will soon have violence associated with it directed at indigenous population groups on the continent, along ethnic lines.
Now comes the key question concerning this Afrophobic violence: What is to be done?
Below are some of the many things which can be done:
African governments have no choice, but to address some of the fundamental economic challenges facing Africa.
The current situation where minorities own a larger chunk of wealth on the continent is not sustainable.
Some countries in the region have begun talking about land reform.
Land is the basis and source of all wealth and African governments have an obligation to ensure that wealth is shared equitably by all, not just by whites.
Afrophobia is a real threat to the African Dream which says that one day, maybe in one or two generations, Africa will achieve complete economic and political integration.
This dream has been burning in Africa since the days of Marcus Garvey; it is a dream which refuses to die.
With these periodic eruptions of Afrophobic violence, it seems as if that grand pan-African dream is being chipped away at the edges bit by bit by some of the very people who only recently began to benefit from the decolonisation project of the whole African continent.
Black consciousness, which once generated key conversations about blackness, must be resuscitated.
That black consciousness seems to be fading away when it should be growing and getting consolidated all over the continent.
As we congregate for the 44th SADC Summit in Harare, our leaders should take a moment to reflect on what it means to be African.
Only when all blacks in Africa feel at home, anywhere on the continent, can we speak of a united Africa.
Businessman Tawanda Chenana is also a philanthropist and Secretary for Lands for ZANU-PF Mashonaland East Province.
