Chanting Warrior… Spot the South African Superiority Complex

Stay calm and understand there is a South African superiority complex. We are heavily divided.

As African people, the road to reclaiming a borderless and jointed continent is one that we are yet to pave for ourselves and the future generations.

South Africa is that ‘rich’ neighbour who still needs you and your resources but when it comes to standing together and creating a united Africa, they forget you.

The most recent example of this is when South African singer Simphiwe Dana’s tweets reflected this complex of superiority in a social media dialogue about getting the rest of the continent to stand in solidarity with Zimbabwe’s recent uprising.

According to Simphiwe, “there’s an expectation, especially in the SADC region, that South Africa must fix ills. What’s in it for us?”.

Contradictions, I thought.

Isn’t this the same artist who makes music about the collective African struggle and the re-imagining of new futures?

“Seems South Africa is needed as a big brother, but also resented when it acts this role,” she tweeted.

It was hard to ignore how she seemed to evade the fact capitalist South Africa also functions on resources from neighbouring countries, this includes historically stolen resources.

Twitter did not ignore this saviour supremacy syndrome.

According to her, this was an attempt at making genuine conversation about SADC relations. With all due respect, I feel like she missed the point here.

She failed to acknowledge that South Africa is a powerhouse neighbour in this street and there is more it can do with the power it has in the region.

But South Africa forgets that once upon a time, its house was on fire.

A fire that extended to its neighbours like Namibia and the community was there to help put out the fire.

Not that this fire of apartheid has completely died out and I guess we can attribute this living fire to its people’s isolation from the rest of the continent.

To them, we are not one. Not really.

Living in South Africa as an African immigrant will show you flames in different ways.

This can be experienced even in academic or creative spaces where you find that our neighbour’s entitlement has spread to another level.

Yes, there was a fire, but then again, this fire was not just orchestrated and performed in the South African house.

Today, South Africa’s dominance over the apartheid legacy must also be challenged.

We also had real flames of apartheid around here which is negated by both black and white South Africa.

In light of researching and embodying a context-relevant meaning of Ubuntu across the continent, we ought to understand that we have a responsibility everywhere to ignite a new fire that speaks of love and solidarity.

A fire that will contribute to the growth and the making of a sustainable African future.

Stand with Zimbabwe, South Sudan, Burundi, Nigeria.

We need to be careful of dealing with our histories and contemporary issues in isolation.

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