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Perspective: Stephen Mpofu
A PERILOUS reversed bromide of the scramble for Africa unfolds with relentless continuity as the so-called civilised world looks on entranced as if by an absorbing wall seen on a film screen.
The Mediterranean Sea between Europe and Africa is the scene of the tragedies that have so far accounted for thousands of lives with women and children among the dead.
But for how long do those world leaders who stoutly call themselves stewards of world order – peace and stability around the globe — continue to sleep and enjoy blissful nights in their perfumed beds with their spouses while African migrants and refugees from Nigeria and Guinea as well as from the horn of Africa die, like flies, in futile attempts to reach a Europe painted on the canvases of their mind as a haven of rainbows?
For the present all that one hears from the world body, the United Nations which ought to oversee order, or peace and stability and the safety of peoples around the world, is a daily reeling of the statistics of migrants and refugees who have died while undertaking the calamitous journey to Europe aboard unseaworthy boats that smugglers use to ferry the Africans to their certain death at sea.
Of course, the figures of those who perish at sea, given by the United Nations High Commission for Refugees are devoid of even the smallest ripple of hope for those fleeing internecine political conflicts at home and in search of safer zones and happiness in a European Union that is itself under threat of self disintegration.
According to the UNHCR, 2,500 people have perished so far this year after rickety ships operated by smugglers from the Libyan coasts en route to Italy, and making a killing by charging as much as $2,000 a person, sank with as many as 700 of the refuge-seekers dying in a single ship wreck.
Last year 2,100 refugees and migrants reportedly lost their lives while many others were rescued by Italian ships after disaster struck at sea.
Now if those people dying in large numbers were Europeans or white people and not Africans or blacks, would the so-called civilised powerful nations of the West have folded their arms the way they have continued to watch the disasters on that capricious sea?
Not so, this pen believes. To the contrary, navy ships would have been unleashed to rush over to the Mediterranean Sea to round up the smugglers and put them behind bars to protect European nationals or those of a similar stock from being exploited and having their lives endangered by the smugglers.
In the circumstances, the reticence demonstrated by those who lay claims to civilised standards that observe the sanctity of human life without discrimination on the basis of race, creed or religion is a strong case for African governments under the umbrella of the African Union to take such action as will rid the menace of smugglers off the Libyan coast to prevent further, unnecessary loss of lives.
At the same time governments in the countries from which people run away to seek protection from political conflicts or misrule should immediately introduce good governance to create peace and stability for the growth of economies and the creation of jobs to prevent their citizens from running to seek better lives and safety in foreign lands.
There appears also to be a strong need for governments in countries affected by the flight of refugees and immigrants to put programmes that educate citizens about the truth that rosier lives abroad, as imagined by those who want to leave the country, are nothing but ever-receding, intangible mirages, or something totally mirthful.
Moreover, with Britain and other member states no longer wanting to remain in the European Union, more EU member states will surely join others which are shutting their borders to entry by the refugees and migrants.
At any rate, those Africans scrambling for Europe are not like their former colonisers in the scramble for Africa who became masters politically and economically in the lands that they colonised.
The Africans cannot impose their language and culture on their host countries in Europe as colonisers did in Africa and elsewhere on the globe in the era of colonisation. The best they can look forward to as foreigners is a serfdom that cannot fail to remind the Africans of: “home sweet home”, notwithstanding some political or economic imponderables in their motherlands.
Therefore most if not all of the Africans fleeing their native countries will certainly rue their choice of turning their back on their umbilical cords back home, telling themselves: “better is the devil you know after all”.
Above all, it remains Africa’s primary responsibility to maintain order and amity in her own backyard as some so-called big powers are known to thumb their noses on challenges that some African nations face, or use them as weaknesses to exploit for hegemonic reasons.
Online Reporter