Curious folks in the community of reading would remember the figure of speech onomatopeia, a word that mimics the sound it describes.
For instance, when we hear the word pain, the onomatopoeic sound that comes to mind is ‘ouch’ or in our local Ghanaian context, ‘wuish’ or ‘agyeee’, just as ‘meow’ is for cats.
In South Africa, the onomatopoeic sound for immigrants is ‘kwerekwere’.
That is the sound foreign languages produce in the ears of the average South African, especially the ruthless characters we have seen recently on our television screens and on social media, chasing and maiming Ghanaians, Nigerians and other foreigners for living on their ‘lend’.
Xenophobia may well have an onomatopoeic sound. Well, the Zulus gave us ‘Dudula’, which means ‘force them out’.
Kwerekwere and Kelewele
At the heart of Operation Dudula is the vowed determination of angry and usually unemployed local South Africans, to dish out frightening levels of disrespect and contempt to anybody who does not sound like them.
When somebody does not feel the need to show you any modicum of respect, they also refuse to learn your name, or at best, decidedly or carelessly mispronounce your name. Sometimes, they change your name altogether and slap any alias on you.
In South Africa, the demonym ‘Ghanaian’ for Ghana, is conveniently, or contemptuously, rendered as Ghanannian.
They have lived with us long enough to learn how to properly call our name. We are merely ‘Kwerekwere’, which sounds like ‘kelewele’.
Now, and for the umpteenth time, South Africans are asking all ‘kwerekweres’ to go ‘beck’ to fix their countries.
This time, Nelson Mandela’s people are going to unthinkable lengths to send away foreigners from their midst, to rebuild their country.
They are breaking and entering foreign-owned local businesses, to loot goods and properties.
They are invading homes owned or occupied by foreign nationals. Last week, DW Africa reported that high school students in Kraaifontein, near Cape Town, went on violent protests to demand the removal of foreign nationals from their schools. They stoned vehicles and looted stalls.
Since the end of Apartheid, South Africa has been home to many Ghanaians and other African nationals, including my primary school classmate who married a South African woman and birthed seven children.
He escaped the recent xenophobic attacks because three years ago, he decided to move back home to start a new life in Berekum.
Yet he knows his loins are in Durban, where he lived and worked for nearly twenty years.
He still has movable and immovable properties in the land.
Borderless Africa
My friend is one of many hardworking Ghanaians who pitched camp in a foreign land within Africa, thinking they were closer home to Ghana than compatriots who looked further West to Europe and North America.
Ironically, while Americans may be raining ICE on illegal immigrants, as the UK tightens immigration, African nationals in South Africa are perhaps the most endangered.
The irony bites even deeper at a time we are calling for borderless Africa, where many nation states are also removing visa restrictions, to facilitate the free flow of goods and people.
The problem is not that Ghanaians enjoy being kwerekwere in South Africa, than living freely in Accra or Swedru.
After living in South Africa for many years, they belong there, documented or undocumented.
Not all Ghanaians are painting nails and doing little jobs, as Jacinta Zuma, one of the notable figures in the xenophobia agenda, puts it most contemptuously.
Some Ghanaians hold decent jobs in South Africa, including an educationist captured by Kofi TV who has built a thriving school complex and hostel accommodations, offering jobs to local South Africans.
Others are contributing to the country as doctors, engineers and church entrepreneurs.
Immigration push and pull
When you call a place home, it is a strange feeling to suddenly be given ultimatums to leave and go ‘beck’ to where you originally called home.
That is the crux of the June 30 deadline for foreigners to leave South Africa. What happens to their chickens and goats and cooking utensils?
These may seem dispensable, but for the typical immigrant in a foreign country, a cooking utensil may be their most valuable asset, because they may have already repatriated most of their earnings to their home countries, and have been sleeping with only one eye half open.
As a Ghanaian living in North America who has also sojourned in a few countries in Europe, I know too well the pull and push factors behind every immigration story.
I felt the home-not-so-sweet-home disorientation of the 300 Ghanaians who boarded President Mahama’s chartered flight from South Africa to Ghana.
They left Ghana for a reason. Are they coming home to confront the same reason?
That reason is what emboldens Phakel Nkosiikhona Umthakathi, another leader of the xenophobia campaign, to incite his henchmen against foreigners.
He tries to buy himself some reprieve by placating us that there is an opportunity in the recent wave of xenophobia for African nationals to demand accountability from their leaders, and to fix their countries.
As if to do penance, Jacinta claws back pieces of her shattered honour by blaming Ghana for overreacting to the attacks on us. The verdict is clear: let’s each mind their own business.
South Africans should remember that good neighbors make good fences, and as Africans, we do not need fences at all.
They should also remember that we are Ghanaians, not Ghanannians.
By KWESI TAWIAH-BENJAMIN, Canada
Tissues Of The Issues
bigfrontiers@gmail.com
Ottawa, Canada
