Something Rotten

Some 20 years ago, an article in the Economist newspaper posited that the greatest threat to world order in the late 20^th and early 21^st century was migration. It is true that by 2015 we still have not seen the apocalypse that the article predicted, but it is clear that we seem destined for a day when millions or even billions would be on the move from areas of the world where life is intolerable to other less blighted places. Yes, we are no way near an apocalypse. But we are getting pretty close to a human disaster that we seem unable or unwilling to stop. This horror is unfolding right in front of our eyes in the region where Africa meets with a Europe that is in no mood to accept anyone’s "...tired, poor or huddled masses, yearning to breathe free".   

Refugees at Lampedusa

The urge to migrate to better conditions is an almost irresistible impulse in human beings, ever since the first humans trudged out of the continent of Africa. 

And that urge to leave continues to this day maybe for less romantic reasons than we like to fancy. True, those early humans who blazed the emigration trail almost certainly had no idea where they were going. They just followed their nose and, presumably climate trends and food opportunities, which eventually led to their populating the entire planet and the survival of our species. And that was good.

          That same instinctual drive may be as difficult to resist in today’s Africa as it was in the Africa of two million years ago. How else can you explain the madness of embarking across the vastness of the Mediterranean in unseaworthy craft, without navigation aids, safety equipment or competent mariners? 

          As I write this blog, European Union leaders are being dragged kicking an screaming to a summit to consider ways of alleviating the plight of these thousands of migrants willing to risk their lives and those of their children to cross a sea notorious for swallowing up the unprepared. So far this year, thousands have drowned, and in the latest casualty figures, some 800 would-be immigrants have died in the attempt to cross the sea.

        Quite coincidentally, the issue of migrants, refugees and asylum seekers has become part of the general debate involving immigration that is dominating the election campaign currently underway in Britain. One party in particular, the UK Independence Party (UKIP) is really rocking the electoral boat with its anti-immigration stance. Its leader, Nigel Farage is a highly articulate and, for some,

charismatic figure but who, himself, is also of immigrant stock. On a recent visit to the Gambia while, looking up a number in the Gambian phone directory, I was forced to do a double take at a half page of “Farages” living in the Greater Banjul Area. Admittedly, there were no “Nigels”, the closest thing being something like “Nabil”. Could our Nigel himself have been African after all?

          So, here on the northern pole of the continent a tragedy, most horrible is in the process of being enacted whilst on the continent's opposite pole  another of similar horror, though not yet of the same magnitude plays out in the rainbow Republic of South Africa, celebrated for its accommodation of different folks with different strokes. The republic`s current imbroglio arose after the Zulu King, Goodwill Zwelithini demanded that foreign workers go home, provoking his 'subjects' (irony no doubt unappreciated in the 'republic') to take the law into their own hands. Now, after several deaths and a short reign of terror against fellow 'other' Africans, the king is backpedalling, claiming that his words had been taken out of context. 

          What these polarities are telling us is that there is something rotten somewhere in the middle of the continent. As if we didn’t know that already. Not only do we know what sickens the continent, we know also what to do about it. We just don’t have the will.

That’s all.

Tell Fren Tru