It is a political mistake to react mutely when white students make black cleaners eat food which they have urinated on, film it all and declare that they did it to show what they think of black people, writes Andrew Wutawunashe in his book, Dear Africa — The Call of The African Dream that The Patriot is serialising.

SOMEDAY, the black people of Africa will wake up to the fact that their woes proceed from chronic shared poverty which is a direct result of the economic dispossession by white colonialism common to all their ancestors.
The tragedy of it all is that many influential political, religious, social and intellectual black leaders are silent on Afro-phobia, choosing rather to make statements about issues in far off lands, while there is a desperate need to educate black people at home and on the continent about the importance of overcoming such divisions fostered on them by their former masters.
There is something definitely unique about South Africa.
We must celebrate Nelson Mandela’s distinguished success through his and others’ sacrificial struggle to liberate South Africa from Apartheid and to create a ‘Rainbow Nation’ in which people of different origins and colours now dwell in harmony.
However, the political leaders of South Africa must not lose sight of a parallel and more important mission they must pursue — the struggle to lift up the overwhelming masses of black Africans in and outside the colonially drawn borders to their place of economic, political and social dignity and competitiveness.
Increasingly, it appears that the faintest colour on the rainbow tapestry of growing South African economic and social advantage is the colour that should by right be the most visible of all — the colour black.
Dear South Africa, we need a rainbow indeed, but with a dominant broad swathe of brilliant black.
Without this, the rainbow will be doomed to a red diffusion of fresh revolution.
When the black people of Africa are raised into their proper place, their dignity and competitiveness based on self-realisation will assure the future of the rainbow.
There are two major doctrines which political leaders owe black Africans — the doctrine of Affirmation and the doctrine of African Unity.
Yes, affirmation.
For how can we expect that a people humiliated, oppressed and disadvantaged for 400 years only on the basis of their black skin can over the space of a couple of decades suddenly stand as psychological equals side by side with other colours in the rainbow?
There is need for our political leaders to set out on a multi-faceted and very robust affirmation of black people, including educational programmes of psychological re-orientation that build up confidence in Africanness.
It is a political mistake to react mutely when white students make black cleaners eat food which they have urinated on, film it all and declare that they did it to show what they think of black people.
Things like this mirror much greater vulnerabilities for the black people in many areas of the rainbow.
And yes, the doctrine of African Unity.
What makes South Africa so special is that as the last liberated piece of the African continent, it is also endowed with great economic clout and international competitiveness.
It is the great hope of African resurgence through African Unity.
There is a school of thought that goes like this: “South Africa, you are strong, rich and successful unlike all those impoverished failed African nations to the north who are flooding you with their destitute people.
“Abandon them, identify with, and take your place in the developed world.”
There is unspeakable folly in this school of thought which has stretched its tentacles even into the hearts and minds of poor Africans in South Africa who resent other poor Africans from the North whom they perceive as coming to finish their jobs and resources.
The truth of course is that these are just poor black people who come to share a common poverty which originated from the same source — historical white domination of black people.
I once had the privilege of pointing out to a consultative gathering of Southern African presidents that the term ‘squatter’ in a politically independent Southern Africa is mainly reserved for black Africans who eke out a piteous living be it in Kibera Nairobi, Hatcliffe Harare, Old Naledi Gaborone or Diepsloot Johannesburg.
The poverty in a Nigerian, Somali, Mozambican, Zimbabwean, Congolese, Malawian or South African shanty settlement is frighteningly identical.
It should not be rocket science for African political leaders to realise that the most powerful tool for lifting up these black people, united by their poverty, is to unite them to rise up as one people, one Africa in their struggle for the dignity, prosperity and competitiveness of a common African Village.
It is very short-sighted for Africans in the South to be blinded by the temporary seeming state of deprivation in other African nations.
Did not the British, the French, the Belgians, the Germans gain their strong economic positions by seeing beyond the surface into the potential wealth that lay in seemingly poor African lands and peoples?
They quickly assimilated with these seemingly poor tribes, albeit through the predator culture of colonialism — and gained unspeakable wealth through African material and coerced human resources.
How much more should South Africa and other African nations, coming from the common African identity and brotherhood, take up the challenge of opening up our artificial borders, assimilating strategically and exploiting the continent’s potential as one?
A fresh exodus of African resources is taking place under our noses, for example to eastern nations, while African political leaders dither on the issue of African unity and fuel an almost neo-tribalistic defunct nationalism within borders drawn by colonial masters.
It was heartening in the last half of the 20th century to witness the rise of the doctrine of Pan-Africanism through political prophets such as Kwame Nkrumah and others.
It was an inspiration to see one part of Africa after another gain freedom with African Unity as part of their vision.
Nothing compares to the actions for African Unity that spoke louder than words as parts of Africa that had gained freedom sacrificially hosted refugees and liberation movements from other parts of Africa that had not yet attained their liberation, all the time fuelled by the correct realisation that Africa was not free until every part of the continent was free.
And last to gain this freedom with the unwavering support of seemingly poor parts of Africa was South Africa, symbolically placed geographically as the feet on which the rest of the continent of Africa stands.
It has been heart-warming to see South African leaders over the past decade utilise their advantage to bring peace and other initiatives to other African nations and open South Africa up to Africans from other parts of the continent.
From Sudan to Burundi, from Cote d’Ivoire to Zimbabwe, South African political leaders have laboured to pacify the continent.
And this is as it should be because the highest and most sacred duty of an African leader is to know that the people of Africa are one.
And this is why South Africa and all Africa should not now be deceived into dropping the ball.