adminEbrahim Harvey
THE xenophobic outrages in South Africa occurred as European leaders were having to deal with an unprecedented influx of African migrants, especially into southern Europe — Spain, Portugal and Italy.Hundreds have drowned during transit in their desperate efforts to escape from poverty, joblessness and destitution in various North African countries, all to varying degrees in the grip of a devastating socio-economic crisis, wars and famine.
Other than those fleeing from wars or seeking political asylum, labour or economic migration has for decades been the biggest reason for the huge influx of foreigners into Europe and SA.
Insofar as the relationship between Europe and Africa is concerned, this was the common thread for more than a century of migration from the latter to the former.
European colonisation of Africa was brutal and devastating, the social and geographical consequences of which we still live with, coming fast on the heels of a ruinous African slavery wrought by the same colonial masters.
It is from such a historical background that we must examine the enormous influx of African people into Europe and from an economically similar perspective, an influx of people from other parts of Africa into SA, especially after 1994 and following the 2008 economic crisis.
Despite the poverty of the black majority, South Africa was seen as the Europe of Africa, especially as we had the most powerful and advanced economy on the continent, attracting desperate job seekers.
Other than different dynamics, the same centripetal forces driving African labour migration into Europe are at play in the influx of Africans into South Africa.
The devastation European slavery, colonialism and imperialism wrought on Africa over centuries and the sub-imperialist role South Africa played, especially in southern Africa under apartheid and in certain respects since 1994, has come to haunt Europe and SA, albeit in different ways.
Would Malcolm X not have said that the chickens have come home to roost, especially for Europe, where the stark brutalities of devastating African slavery and colonisation originated? Probably.
In Europe’s case, the brutal pillaging and looting of Africa’s mineral, natural and human resources over a long period meant that by the time African countries gained their independence, their economies were so deliberately and heavily exploited and skewed in favour of greater profits for the European colonisers and multinational corporations that it could do little to reverse centuries of enslavement, subjugation and exploitation. In fact, in many cases the granting of formal independence led to tighter control and greater economic exploitation of those countries, hence the term neo-colonialism.
As a result, labour migration to European countries was inevitable, given the devastation of local economies and it was as inevitable that it would explode in the wake of the capitalist economic crisis, which began in 2008 and worsened as the years went by.
A report by Global Initiative Against Transnational Organised Crime found last May that in just two days, about 4 000 African migrants landed on the shores of Italy. The trafficking of immigrants into Europe is even more lucrative than smuggling in drugs.
As a result of huge African immigration, the demographic profile of cities such as Rome, Lisbon, London and Paris is rapidly changing. The number of African people on the streets of these cities has escalated over the past decade, but had already been growing steadily for several decades.
The public face of these cities and Europe on the whole is steadily blackening, which will have enormous social, cultural, economic and political implications as these trends will increase.
Europe must brace itself for an increasingly blackening future, propelled mainly by the need to find jobs to survive in a tough and turbulent world and the historical fact that the biggest victims of European slavery, colonialism and capitalism have always been Africans.
The desperate African migrants flooding into Europe are the offspring ultimately of the slaves and workers Europe brutally oppressed and exploited over centuries, igniting perhaps a macabre sense of the vengeance of history.
In South Africa’s case, for which the experience in Europe is a good parallel, it must be clear that no matter what denials about the scourge of xenophobia might claim and no matter what bureaucratic measures might be taken to arrest the influx of job seekers into our country, it will not stem the tide.
As much as thousands of Africans from North Africa are so desperate that they are daily risking their lives on dangerous journeys to get to Europe, so will many more Africans be entering Johannesburg and other cities, driven mainly by the same inescapable necessity of jobs.
It is thanks to the deeply systemic and structural laws of combined, but unequal and lopsided global capitalist development over centuries, none more heinously evident than that between Europe and Africa.
The avalanche of African migrant labourers making their claims right inside the capitals of Europe and SA has unleashed a volatile trend that could have serious consequences for the stability and future of these countries if these issues are not understood from a historical and contemporary perspective and dealt with holistically, constructively and responsibly.
The ruling elite of Europe and SA are evidently worried about these developments and some seem to be shaking in their boots at the sights of hordes of desperate Africans flooding their shores, but it is as unstoppable as the ocean’s waves.
The forces, factors and contradictions that shaped our history, whether in Europe, SA or elsewhere, cannot be contained, repressed, sanitised, legalised and regulated away.
They must instead be wisely, courageously and openly faced, the sooner the better, in ways that recognise that many severe injustices were committed in the past against African people in particular, whose offspring today are demanding social justice from those who not only oppressed and exploited their ancestors but who continue to do so to themselves.
Harvey is a writer, commentator and author.
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