The West Is Always To Blame For The Problems Crippling Africa

April saw a wave of xenophobic attacks in South Africa after Zulu King Goodwill Zwelithini reportedly said foreigners should go back to their own countries. Foreigners’ shops were looted and there were numerous brutal murders including the burning alive of several people. NBC News reported that 10,000 migrants fled their homes amid the attacks.

Acting as the continent’s Unite Against Fascism in this instance, Boko Haram gave “24 hours to end xenophobic attacks or face bombing,” a threat to the South African embassies in nearby countries, additionally promising to execute all South Africans living in Nigeria, Chad, Niger and other surrounding countries if the attacks did not cease.

As it is not Qu’ranic law to demand kuffar stop killing kuffar, perhaps the demands that Africans not kill other Africans was a strategic move, playing the long game in their attempted religious conquest of Africa, indicating their next move will be to agitate for gun control in South Africa so that it’s a free-for-all(ah) for them if they eventually arrive.

But how are we to understand South Africa’s xenophobic attacks? There is plenty of sensible analysis on mainstream news websites, but today we are going to look into the minds of the far left to see their parallel take on the situation.

As the Socialist Workers’ Party and their UAF pets aren’t willing to go and protest in South Africa with “Hope Not Hate” and “Stand Up To Racism” placards and report back to us, we will have to go through a proxy and what could channel their spirit better than an article entitled “Driven by Apartheid’s Legacy of White Monopoly Capitalism – Xenophobia in South Africa”?

Garikai Chengu, writing for CounterPunch, certainly knows where to point the finger of blame – white people, for instilling internalised racism in black South Africans. Explaining that internalised racism is where “black people begin to believe that their own life and the lives of other black African people are worth very little,” he posits that, “the xenophobic black-on-black violence spreading across South Africa is a direct result of centuries of white-on-black violence and oppression.”

Of course, there’s our answer. But what’s this? Genocide Watch, an American organisation monitoring human rights abuses, reports that there is widespread and institutionalised murder and violence towards white people. White South Africans are seeking asylum in countries like Canada where applications cite president Jacob Zuma’s repeated singing of ‘Kill the Boer’, a song that urges the murder of white farmers but is noted in numerous places on the internet that it is used to refer to all white South Africans.

Also in an application, “‘crimes against white people frequently involved mutilation and brutality, even when nothing was stolen,” was included as part of the plea. Indeed amidst the recent spate of xenophobic violence an 86 year old Austrian nun was gang-raped and strangled.

Evidently the claim that whites made black people hate other black people but not white people quickly falls apart under scrutiny. Some say black South African violence towards white South Africans is “payback” for years of apartheid but then try to claim the recent murders of foreign black Africans is due to internalised racism caused by white people. Far left types want to have it all ways – heads “oppressed” groups win, tails “privileged” groups lose.

Internalised racism isn’t the only reason for this violence, however, in Chengu’s mind. The fact white South Africans are allowed to own things is also to blame apparently, causing him to break Godwin’s Law and write that “the only difference between the Third Reich and Apartheid is that “reconciliation” inGermany did not leave pro-Nazi financiers in business; whereas in South Africa, those financiers are still firmly in control.” If you’re wondering where he’s going with this, another article of his entitled “Zimbabwe: A New Economic Model For Africa” may provide some insight into the utopia he believes South Africa should model itself on.

Chengu, who worked for Goldman Sachs, is the founder and chairman of “one of Zimbabwe’s fastest growing indigenous private gold companies” and is a Harvard postgraduate, has written numerous articles praising Robert Mugabe. Here he argues that Zimbabwe has pioneered “a more economically productive way of farming.” That will come as news to the 2.2 million estimated to be at risk of starvationlast year in what was once the breadbasket of the world. He also praises Mugabe’s “land democratisation” – the forcible seizure of land from white farmers who employed 400,000 Zimbabweans at a time of 80% unemployment.

“Say what you want about Mr. Mugabe, but today, Zimbabweans own Zimbabwe,” the article concludes. This is the most telling about how we know we can rely on Mr Chengu for a Socialist’s eye view – the West is always in the wrong whilst the motives of all other peoples must be benign.

The assertion that “Africa is not under-developed; she is over-exploited. Western foreign investors are merely foreign exploiters”, sheds light on why Chengu is able to overlook China’s new role in Zimbabwe, where it is setting up an airbase, has been accused of abusing workers, has significant mining and agricultural interests and is the only country exempt from the indigenisation laws which force all foreign investors to cede 51% of their shareholding to (selected) Zimbabweans.

The Guardian reported workers alleging the Chinese eat off plates then feed Zimbabweans the leftovers, beat African workers if they make mistakes, sack them if they question their pay or conditions and flood shops with cheap Chinese imports, undercutting Zimbabwean vendors and putting them out of business. I’m not sure how this fits into Chengu’s picture of “Zimbabweans owning Zimbabwe”.

It’s easy to find mainstream analyses of international events such as the April attacks but I always find it good to keep abreast of the likely views of the sorts of people you see at the never-ending stream of lefty demos that blight/entertain with their futility the UK.  And in this case, the narrative seems to be that allSouth Africa’s problems would be solved if they installed their own Mugabe and replaced the evil “white monopoly capitalism” with… Chinese monopoly capitalism.

Reading Socialist Worker magazine, for example, I often find their portrayal of events to be like gazing into an alternate universe where completely different things happened and for completely contrary reasons. The way I’ll try and rationalise them from now on is to channel Garikai Chengu and remember that whatever the situation, the West is always to blame.