South Africans want jobs healthcare for themselves and children. Dismissing their anger as un-African risks deeper backlash against ANC leadership.
Minister Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma during the ANC NEC media briefing on 1 August 2018. Picture: Gallo Images / Daily Sun / Lucky Morajane
The former chair of the African Union, Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, is correct when she says many South Africans do not believe they are part of the continent of Africa.
However, geographic reality is at odds with the emotional feelings of a great number of our citizens.
So perhaps Dlamini-Zuma, who spent some of her time in exile, would have been well advised not to take a hectoring tone with ordinary people, who see their livelihoods threatened by an uncontrolled tsunami of foreign economic migrants.
That tsunami was triggered by the earthquake of the ANC that, for decades, seemed to believe the resources of the country it inherited were limitless and that to restrict access to this country was “un-African”.
You can rail all you like, comrade, about the borders of Africa being a colonial construct from the Conference of Berlin in 1883, but that won’t ease the anger of South Africans who have to compete for jobs and access to medical and health facilities, which are overcrowded.
They want their country for themselves and their children.
That doesn’t make them fascists or Trumpists, it just makes them normal human beings who haven’t been given the better life the ANC promised them.
Ignore their feelings at your peril.
