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Why are you leaving?

The Question That The African Union Would Rather Not Answer.

Ex-president Mbeki bade them welcome and they came in droves. South Africa has one of the largest inflows of refugees in the world. Most of them come because of economic reasons and because the South African laws are so lax and the government departments so inefficient,   the refugees can easily slip through the legal sieve.

It is only when recurrent bouts of xenophobia arise, such as we have been seeing in Soweto lately, does the wisdom of having wide open uncontrolled borders ever reach the radar screens of our government or our television screens.

We have so many problems locally, that we seldom lift our eyes northwards to see what is happening between North Africa and Europe. Occasionally, when a particularly horrible boat accident between North Africa and Lampedusa in Italy happens, where thousands of desperate African women, men and children, who have given their last everything, to escape Africa to try their luck in Europe or Britain, do we get a glimpse of the horror (unscrupulous smugglers using boats in the most deplorable conditions) that these desperate people have to use.

If you go into any smart bookshop in SA, you will see dozens of books with titles such as “Africa, the new Asia” or “Africa on the Rise” etc, etc. Alas, all these shiny new books do not correspond to the reality on the ground. Thirty five million Africans chose to live outside of Africa. Everyday “Desperados” risk their lives and their last penny, just to get across the Mediterranean to seek a better life elsewhere.

 Who are these people and why are they so desperate to get out of Africa? 

These “Desperados” are no passive lot, seeking free handouts elsewhere. They are very often Africa’s “best and brightest” They have energy and a vision of a better life, but not in Africa.

They leave their countries because of rotten schools, rotten or none existent health care systems, corruption, unbending traditionalism, sexisms and authoritarian leadership. Plain and simply said, they have lost all faith in their governments.

How broken must a system be, before its young people undertake such a dangerous journey?

These fleeing people, often become carrying pillars in other countries, e.g. Ghanaian nurses and doctors are an established part of the British National Health Services. God knows how many SA doctors and nurses stock up the National Health Schemes in Britain?

One would think that the various presidents who attend the African Union Summits would be asking themselves or each other, “Why this brain-drain, why are we loosing our best and our brightest people?”

 To be honest, I do not think that the African presidents care stuff about who comes and who goes. Every energetic person who leaves is one less to feed, one less job to find and one less critical human being to rock the boat. To top all cynicism is of course the fact that those who flee and “make it”, mostly send money home to the struggling who are left behind.

The presidents of the African Union are so busy congratulating each other for having “got there”, with their entourages of glutinous wives and clans and their unscrupulous self-enrichment plans, that relevant questions become irrelevant. If the presidents of Africa are incapable of asking the right questions, how is Africa to find the right answers?

Countries that produce a lot of refugees like Nigeria and Congo are indeed very wealthy countries, where there should be enough for everybody. But this is not so, because the political classes are just too greedy. Africa is not poor but its riches are very unfairly divided and the political classes like it that way. The role of government, schools and health care are often left to Aid Agencies.

The cynicism of these presidents is as macabre as it is repulsive. In the Francophone African countries, the saying  “Trop bon, trop con” rules the day and translates roughly into, “To behave morally is to be stupid”

Amongst African watchers, the expression “governing into poverty” is gaining traction because this is exactly what these rapacious African presidents do.

In my extended family the first lot of young people are preparing to move out. They are entrepreneurs, who have given employment to quite a few. Never have they have been grant receivers.

Now with the fallen rand, which has lost 30% of its value and the expectation that South Africa will be classified as “a junk bond” next year, it has been come clear that SA offers no future for them. We know that leaving and starting somewhere will not be easy, we will miss them terribly but we know that their decision is right.

Faced with a government that one cannot believe in, my folks too have become “Desperados”, only they are luckier than those desperate folk who risk high seas, unscrupulous smugglers and detention camps when they arrive in the promised lands.

If we want a better Africa, then we have to have people with a moral compass at the top. Africa has a long way to go.

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