Thought for the Week, May 3, 2026

 

“There is mystery in the air, Africans are not together,” sang Sonny Okosun in “Holy War”.  It was a song he sang during the years of racist policy of apartheid in South Africa. 

Within the same context of racism in South Africa, he sang “Fire in Soweto”.  In “Fire in Soweto”, he wondered: “Tell me what you gonna do when you find out the truth that the colour of God is neither black nor white”. 

The lyrics of Okosun’s “Holy War” point to a fact that is often ignored, and that is, many of us Africans live in denial.  We deny that there is racism among black Africans.  We only talk of racism as a black-versus-white matter.  Just as many black and African scholars find it convenient to maintain a deafening silence over the intra-African slave trade that preceded and facilitated the trans-Atlantic slave trade, we either gloss over or deny outright that there is intra-African racism.  We often speak of tribalism.  Yet, what we call tribalism is racism. 

There are ethnic supremacists just as there are white supremacists.  And the two types of human beings have one thing in common: they lay claims to supremacy.   While the white supremacist uses the colour of his skin to draw his conclusion that he is superior to the black African, the African ethnic supremacist predicates his claim on the mere fact of his ethnic affiliation.  It is the fallacy of superior affiliation to which many African scholars subscribe.  Many of our African scholars are at the vanguard of this train of denial of African racism. 

But recent events in South Africa question our presupposition and challenge us to admit that we Africans are not innocent, and we have never been.  Who would have thought, during the years of apartheid when Nigeria opened her doors wide to South Africans seeking refuge from racism, that the time would come when Nigerians would be compelled to flee a xenophobic South Africa?

African scholars have evoked in their writings concepts of communalism.  Julius Nyerere wrote of ujamaa, which means brotherhood, as a form of African socialism.  In African studies, students have been treated to a cocktail of concepts of African romanticism.  Scholars of Yoruba culture have written about ajobi and ajogbe.  What that in fact means is that I treat you well because we are of the same stock, while I abbreviate your humanity if we are not of the same stock, even if the colour of your skin is black like mine, and even if we bear the passport of the same country. 

In the wake of the sad events in South Africa, my friend, Professor Tunji Oyesile of the Department of Philosophy, University of Ibadan made this observation on Facebook:  “With the xenophobic attack in South Africa and black inhumanity to black, many have turned the searchlight on interstate relations in Africa. However, this incident is a major challenge to African scholars, especially scholars in the Humanities, African Studies and the Social Sciences. We should engage in a re-interrogation of certain taken for granted communalistic ethos such as Ubuntu, Ujamaa, Ajobi and Ajogbe and such other concepts we lay claim to as Africans as the basis of our humanity. In other words, how communal is African communalism in the contemporary world?”

In response to this pertinent and well-formulated question, he got this response from Benson Akinnawonu: “What a challenging poser! There is great difference between traditional African culture (communalism) and the ensuing xenophobic attack syndrome in South Africa. African traditional culture of brotherhood had been grossly eroded through globalization. It is unfortunate that African youths have been assimilated to strange foreign cultures. This calls for a separate conference.”

Also responding to Professor Oyesile, my colleague at the Dominican University Ibadan, Father Benjamin Kwaghgba wrote: “How communal is African cannibalism (generically so-called) within our borders? Is xenophobia a product of this communalism or of globalization? I think these two questions underlie the assumptions in your original post.”

Ioy Ihua thinks so.  He wrote: “The Tiv capture it as Ayatutu; ‘the I is the we, and the we is the I’.   When the Tiv chorus; ‘Ayatutu ka u no’ (who are the we?) they answer in unison, ‘ka se’ we are the we) signifying inclusiveness, fellow feeling thus exemplifying unity of purpose. In Tiv and Africa at large, such is what gives strength, success and meaning in life and society. The spirit of Africa is no more, things have fallen apart even among those who were once their brother's keepers. It’s sad that Africa’s soul has been broken into meaningless parts.

Statements such as Akinnawonu’s and Ihua’s represent a romanticist generalization that perpetuates the assumption that xenophobia is alien to Africa, and that it is a product of African communalism or of globalization?  But that is not true.  If it were true, Africa’s numerous ethnic communities would have been living together in peace.  

Xenophobia comes from fear and suspicion of the foreigner.  History shows that before Africa’s contact with European colonialists, we Africans were fighting on tribal lines, and that, even within the same ethnic community, all was not well.  There is only a semblance of solidarity when there is a perceived common enemy. Where was African communalism when the Tutsis and the Hutus were massacring each other in Rwanda?  Where was African sense of common life when the Igbo were being killed before and during the Nigerian Civil War?  Where was Ajobi during the Yoruba War?  And where was Ajogbe during the Ife and Modakeke altercation?  As we speak, there is heightened insecurity in Nigeria and accusing fingers are being pointed across boundaries of ethnic communities.

Xenophobia is a child of ethnocentrism.  Ethnocentrism is not peculiar to Africa.  Europeans fought their own inter-ethnic wars before they opted for liberal democracies.  To reduce ethnic and religious tension, they put in place constitutions that protect the citizen from the hands of government. But in Africa, what has been tamed by constitutional provisions elsewhere has been institutionalized in Africa.  Even organs and functionaries of state are used to propagate it. 

The time has come for us Africans to admit that African ethnocentrism predates colonialism and globalization. We Africans have never been innocent. The events in South Africa serve as a brutal reminder that we have never been.   I have always believed that this much vaunted “African communalistic ethos” is ethnocentric romanticism propagated by befriending Jean Jacques Rousseau.   Before the trans-Atlantic slave expedition, before colonialism and globalism, Africa was not a local government area in paradise.  Africans have never been together, and for that, globalization is not to blame. 

There is no difference between what some South Africans are doing to other Africans and what some other Africans do to Africans of ethnic or religious affiliations different from theirs.  Our various African countries are known for their ethnic cleavages.  And in fact, apart from inter-ethnic conflicts, there are also intra-ethnic conflicts, that is, when people of the same ethnic community go after each other’s dignity, life and property because of real or perceived injustice and the myth of ethnic purity and supremacy. There is no difference between what South Africans are doing to Nigerians and what Nigerians are doing to each other out of mismanagement of their ethnic diversity.

Beyond the romanticist presentation of Africa as untainted before contact with the western world, the fact needs to be admitted that, wherever and whenever animals enter into a conflict, they are fighting over possessions and pleasure.  Human beings are animals endowed with rationality so that they can live together in peace and harmony.  But when reason is either marginalized or exiled, the beast in the human being is brought out.  Then human beings behave like lower animals fighting for power so that they can take possess greater wealth and maximise pleasure.  This is true of the African as it is true of Europeans and Asians.  What makes the difference is the moral and political will to manage the propensity for bestiality that is in every human person.  In order to manage this, the human being needs to be schooled in virtue, reined in by good laws, and, from the theological perspective, enabled by the grace of God in order to be good.

This article was first published in the Catholic Weekly Independent on September 29, 2019.   It is being republished in the light of recent recurrence of rising wave of xenophobia in South Africa.

© Fr Anthony Akinwale, O.P.