Xenophobia will always be counterproductive

Editor, Reference is made to Joseph Rwagatare’s article, “Dear South Africans, killing immigrants does not create jobs” (The New Times, April 21). Mwalimu Julius Nyerere was in fact of migrant stock. The story has it that when a group of migrants from the north arrived at the home of the chief of Buhaya in the 1880s or so asking for a piece of land to settle, the chief asked the subordinate who came to tell him about the migrants, “What gifts are they bringing to me?” Finding that they had brought nothing of value to offer him, the chief refused to receive them and the group was forced to move on from his lands. They finally settled around what became Musoma on the southwestern shores of Lake Victoria. However, everywhere they went around the region they would henceforth be known as “Abazanaki”, and it is from them that Tanganyika’s most illustrious son, the father of the country’s independence and its pan-African unity with Zanzibar, would be born. If you looked carefully, few of us can trace all our ancestors many generations back to the countries with which we are now identified. In our own country, Grégoire Kayibanda is said to have been of Shi origin from what is now South Kivu in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Juvénal Habyarimana’s father came to Rwanda from around Kabale, in what is now Uganda, as a porter for Catholic missionaries. The irony in our case is that these two expelled and tried all they could to keep from their own country a group of people who could trace their origins on this land to the very mist of time. The moral: xenophobia and identity politics that exclude others on alleged foreignness, when we are often all of us of migratory stock, only impoverishes those who practice such short-sightedness. For without the Abazanaki, we might not have Tanzania. On the other hand, had we not had a Kayibanda or a Habyarimana, their foreign puppet-masters, who are the real authors of our bloody history, would surely have found another local hand to use as a cat’s paw to repress, kill and exclude those Rwandans they wrongly designated foreigners on their own land. Mwene Kalinda ************************** That is why I believe there are more wars to come in Africa’s future if our politicians do not change their naive way of thinking. Look at the Democratic Republic of Congo for instance: people who been there before 14th century are being killed or expelled because they resemble Rwandans or are Kinyarwanda speakers. You are not supposed to work hard and own wealth more than a person calling himself a native person, and once you succeed, fake cases against you will come up, your cattle will be confiscated on false allegations, your houses set ablaze, immigration officers will hunt for you day in day out… Yulian

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Xenophobia will always be counterproductive