EDITORIAL & OPINION: Why it’s time to change to Afrocentrism

What you need to know:

The exit of Barack Obama, Brexit and entry into the White House of hawkish Donald Trump and everything associated with him surely should be a wake-up call to Africans that the time is right to rekindle the spirit of one Africa for Africans.

From recurrent xenophobic killings in South Africa to displacements in West Africa, the fear of nationals of one country being set upon either unofficially by nationals of another or officially by decree is nothing new.

The exit of Barack Obama, Brexit and entry into the White House of hawkish Donald Trump and everything associated with him surely should be a wake-up call to Africans that the time is right to rekindle the spirit of one Africa for Africans.

None of this – Tanzanians expelled from Mozambique, Ethiopians arrested in Kenya, South Africans lynching non-South Africans and Tanzanians arrested for alleged espionage in Malawi – need to become headline news if Africa re-strategised its relationship with itself and the rest of world.

Brexit and Donald Trump have given us good reason because in rejecting immigrants we have no choice but to rethink our survival strategies together. When the West gave us immigration rules that followed colonisation, they forgot that Africa was basically one. It still is one but is divided by rules that are not of our making.

Africa may not have done many things well. But for sure, we have been great at identifying, isolating, arresting, trying and deporting fellow Africans, better known as illegal immigrants, from our so-called ancestral lands. Our immigration officers are basically colonial police officers-cum-intelligence officers-cum-torturers-cum-political commissars all rolled into one.

We have refused to learn that the most successful economies of the world have been built from scratch by immigrants.

We are lucky to we have our very own Dr John Pombe Magufuli and his Afrocentric policy which seems to have literally thrown away the script that every head of state of a former British colony must run to London and Washington with a beggar’s bowl.

I am not saying the begging has stopped, though I believe it should. Dr Magufuli has brought a new dynamic of confronting our genie in the bottle. The fact that we have entered into debasing contracts for our natural resources and have hardly used our funds well for the good of our people makes for reason to worry about how we would have changed the course of African history.

In the West, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is asking the right questions, including where Canada needs new engagement with Africa. It does. Too much African resources have enriched the West, Canada included.

Africa has no chance of stemming the tide of thousands dying at sea trying to make it to Europe if we do not have a rethink.

The recent bundling out of Tanzanians in Mozambique is a case in point. It points to the need to redraw our diplomacy and retraining of our immigration officers, the whole kit and caboodle of them.

Thus far we have been obsessed with timua timua (chase away) and even have a choice name for them – wahamiaji haramu (illegal immigrants). We have ostracised those who cross into our borders and criminalise them. We assume all criminality is done by these undocumented folks.

In Malawi, several Tanzanians have been arrested on suspicion of being involved in espionage. Espionage belongs to the Cold War era and the Malawian government would do well to establish how folks who were merely looking to earn an honest living could possibly have been collecting secret information purportedly on behalf of the United Republic of Tanzania. It doesn’t make sense.

The time has come for Africans to rethink our interstate relations. There was a time Idi Amin and Mwalimu Nyerere were not on talking terms but Ugandans and Tanzanians had no such qualms. It behoves Africa to redraw its borders and stop criminalising migrants looking to earn an honest living.