Imagine you have a tonne of dangerous chemical waste or radioactive material in your backyard. It certainly poses potential risk and danger to the health, safety and security of your own family and probably neighbours. To stem that, you arrange to have the material dumped in the backyard of a “third-family” and go back to your house satisfied you have solved a problem!
In a nutshell that is what America seeks to do with and in African countries over its controversial policy of deporting migrants to “third countries” in order to rid its own compound of undesirables that with partial success but has largely been resisted. With Nigeria telling the US, “It had enough problems of its own to act as a dumping site for undesirables from elsewhere,” at least 13 countries, including South Africa, rejected the move by the Trump administration which viewed critically, was merely dumping Africa’s problems into Africa itself.
We laugh when we are insulted. Take for example, the recent two incidents in which President Trump reportedly complimented an African female reporter for her beauty.
A plane carrying five deportees of Vietnamese, Jamaican, Laos, Cuban and Yemeni descent from the US arrived in Eswatini last Tuesday. “This flight took individuals so uniquely barbaric that their home countries refused to take them back,” Homeland Security spokeswoman, Tricia McLaghlin was quoted by the media as saying. They included rapists and murderers. Admittedly, America never intends rapists and despicable murderers.
They were let in on a clean sheet just like any other individuals seeking a better life in the land of “dreams and possibilities.” However, it was all America that turned them into monsters that the undesirable human beast had to eject, sending them off, thousands of miles away from, say, the Vietnam Administration and shipping them to Africa, Africa was thus made to incur the risk.
But perhaps, Trump should not be blamed. It is time for Africa to coordinate foreign policy and always respond with a common standpoint. Yes, fellow Africans, intuitively, it is our failure that others hold us in low esteem. We have allowed them the freedom to corrupt us, manipulate us and to prostitute our honour. We created the conditions for maniacs like Trump to regard our soils as nothing more than a dumping site for barbarians made in America.
We laugh when we are insulted. Take for example, the recent two incidents in which President Trump reportedly complimented an African female reporter for her beauty. Who on earth doesn’t know that African women are the curviest? So, was that a compliment or disguised body shaming? In any case, that comment was entirely inappropriate for the gravity of the moment and occasion; risking peace in eastern DR Congo where millions have perished in decades-long bloody conflicts.
President Trump also was quoted as having asked Liberia’s President how come she spoke an impeccable English? With those utterances, their mother tongue gone, it is not for President Trump, or whomever, in an acquired language. He is himself a German “islamado” that way but he sees it white.
Fellow Africans, we should stop giggling when we are insulted. Also, we should stop kissing belly wars of others to like being antisemitic when we are quite openly discriminated against and compelled to remain dumb. I remain unapologetic.
Munyaga’s contact is mmunyaga@gmail.com
