Thank you, South Africa

October 4, 2011

Thank you, South Africa

the intellectual capacity of Zimbabwean workers to that country’s economy will have made both the migrant workers and those of us back home crack sumptuous smiles of reciprocal appreciation.
Equally gratifying is a separate report that South Africa will grant amnesty to Zimbabweans who illegally obtained South African identification documents provided these are surrendered to authorities there in exchange for valid residential permits, and that Zimbabweans in business and students will be issued with relevant permits on condition that they are in possession of valid Zimbabwean identification documents.

The good news was delivered by secretary-general of the African National Congress Cde Gwede Mantashe, who was heading the ANC delegation which met Zanu-PF officials in Harare recently.
Of course, the ANC is the party in power in Pretoria and any pronouncements that it makes represent government thinking and policies. In a world polarised politically and economically between the rich North and the not-so-rich South, inter-and intra-continental co-operation in the South becomes a matter of life and death. But charity begins at home, it is said and for a good reason, so that intra-regional co-operation becomes a logical point of departure towards South-South co-operation.

The economic and social rewards that South Africa is reaping thanks to the professional acumen and industry of Zimbabweans working in that country should be viewed in the context of inter-country and intra-regional co-operation. But these benefits should not be unidirectional but mutual, preferably with the South African and Zimbabwean governments agreeing to an arrangement whereby South Africa remits a portion of the salaries of skilled Zimbabwean personnel so that Zimbabwe also benefits from the education provided to those whose skills are now helping to develop a sister country.

For African countries to “share and share alike”, to use socialist terminology, their scarce resources, be they human or otherwise, is a logical move towards self-sufficiency or a semblance of it, and a plausible way of avoiding a slave-like dependency syndrome that has seen some overseas countries off-loading their rejects on some African countries under the guise that the expatriates were highly skilled personnel.
Instead of training locals to replace them, these so-called foreign experts are instead retrained by the host country, as what once happened north of Zimbabwe decades ago. Others entrench themselves in their expatriate positions, when they are supposed to prepare locals to replace them at the end of their contracts.

Some African countries, driven by an inferiority complex prefer to hire the services of white foreign expatriates to whom they pay huge salaries out of their meagre resources, when fellow Africans, and skilled and well-acquainted with local conditions and for a reasonable wage bill would be the ideal-typical human resources to employ instead.

Also, unfortunately, the way some ordinary people view the presence of foreign labour in their country, however skilled the aliens might be, does not often coincide with their governments’ appreciation of the benefits foreign labour brings to their country.

Examples of attitudes against black expatriate employees are not hard to cite. Some Zimbabweans working or looking for jobs in countries over the border have experienced both horrific psychological and physical harassment and have been virtually shoed away or generally treated like thieving dogs by locals who felt that their own jobs were threatened.

That is understandable, however, since migration is almost universally seen as a threat to jobs held down by local people. But this dysfunctional psychological fear for one’s job should not be allowed to stand as a barrier to a regional, even continental, exchange of skills and knowledge, especially in Africa where these values are sometimes in critical short supply.

So those Africans who worship the goddess of xenophobia ought to be made to realise that they are anti – ubuntu/hunhu, njengoba umuntu ngumuntu ngabantu/munhu munhu nevanhu. A typical example of a person’s being a person because of other people is probably better portrayed by nationalists from different cultures turning some of the world’s metropolis into “boiling pots”.

It is said, for instance, that in New York City foreigners far outnumber Americans, so that New Yorkers are New Yorkers because of a cross-fertilisation of cultural values and skills courtesy of non-indigenous American New Yorkers. The same inter-dependency of humans can be said of other countries and cities overseas as well as in Africa.

Otherwise, this pen must applaud South Africa for acknowledging the part played by Zimbabweans thereby helping to advance that country’s economic developments. Some countries have shown their ingratitude to Zimbabweans by their loud silence.