The great South African steam train, once engineered by giants, is rolling backwards down a steep slope, its drivers asleep at the wheel and its tracks rusted through.
How spectacular to witness a nation with such a profound history of solidarity suffer from collective amnesia.
The descendants of those who fought side by side against oppression have found a new existential threat: the informal vegetable vendor from Harare and the tuckshop owner from Lilongwe.
As marchers trudge through the streets of Johannesburg and Durban, brandishing sticks and rehearsing their xenophobic choreography, one cannot help but hear the haunting echo of Hugh Masekela’s trumpet.
“There is a train that comes from Namibia and Malawi, from Zambia and Zimbabwe…” Masekela famously sang, chronicling the deep, historical arteries of migrant labour that literally built the gold-paved foundations of Johannesburg. But history is a luxury for a crowd that prefers the easy narcotic of scapegoating.
Today’s protestors look upon those very deep-rooted historical bonds and offer a profound, intellectual counter-argument: “(M)abahambe!” (they must go).
Common sense solidarity for fellow Global South strugglers has evaporated into thin air.
The sheer ineptitude of this modern crusade would be comedic if it weren’t so tragic.
Led by figures like Jacinta Ngobese-Zuma of the March and March movement, the protestors toyi-toyied outside dilapidated buildings, convinced that deporting a penniless undocumented migrant will suddenly fix a 33% unemployment rate, repair a jittery electricity grid, and erase decades of state sponsored corruption.
“There is a train that comes from Lesotho, from Mozambique, from Botswana…” Masekela’s refrain reminds us of the blood and sweat invested by the continent into the South African miracle.
Yet, the mob looks at the economic wreckage caused by political elites and concludes that a migrant staying 50 days on a 30-day visa is the true mastermind behind the nation’s infrastructural and governance near collapse.
Even the venerable African National Congress (ANC), a liberation movement that once found sanctuary across the continent during the dark days of apartheid, has predictably tweaked its stance to catch the populist wind.
When the going gets tough, the tough blame the neighbours. It is a masterclass in political cowardice, leaving the radical Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) as the stubborn defenders against this virulent Afrophobia.
While police deploy soldiers overnight to stop the streets from burning, voluntary repatriation flights are organised by Malawi and Nigeria, rescuing their citizens from the wrath of a people who have forgotten who kept them warm when they were cold in exile.
As a foreign national allegedly fell to his death from an eighth-floor window in Durban, fleeing from the sheer terror of the mob, the marchers continued their chanting.
“Mabahambe!” they screamed, oblivious to the fact that they are poisoning the very well of pan-African brotherhood. They demand mass deportations, completely blind to the reality that removing the continent’s entrepreneurs will not magically conjure up jobs from an inept bureaucracy.
“This train carries young and old African men, who are conscripted to work in the gruelling conditions of the gold mines…” went Masekela’s monologue, honouring the collective sacrifice of an entire continent.
Today the train is indeed driverless, hurtling backwards into a dark abyss of self-inflicted isolation.
The protestors believe they are cleansing the nation; in reality, they are merely advertising their own historical illiteracy and governance failures to a watching world, shouting “mabahambe” into the wind while their own house burns down around them.
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