In 1978, SA Ukeje, UJ Nkamuke, and AA Falade were together with the Son of Man (when my name was Castro!). I had no beard, but I was filled with revolutionary fervour and formed the Association of Solidarity with South African Peoples (ASSAP). It was close to ASAP (As Soon As Possible) because of the sense of URGENCY. I was the genuine director general, though we had no account with the CBN, no office at the Federal Secretariat (both then situated in Lagos) and no hefty budgetary support. I had just turned 20. Our key goal was to show solidarity with, and support for, the suffering people of South Africa then under the excruciating grip of the white supremacist apartheid regime. We were then students of economics at the University of Ibadan. By then, Cyril Ramaphosa was studying law at the University of the North and was an active student unionist. He had ‘enjoyed’ detention for 17 months in 1974 and 1976 for his roles in anti-apartheid struggles.
The anti-apartheid struggle was the daily bread of Nigeria and Nigerians and, indeed, all of Black Africa, who saw apartheid as an unacceptable slap on the face of all Blacks in Africa and throughout the world. By then, Nigerian civil servants committed 2% of their salaries, while students forfeited lunch so as to pay the Mandela Tax. ‘Free Mandela’ and ‘NO to Apartheid’ were on the lips of everybody, and no social gathering was complete without those songs and related speeches. You would think that apartheid was being practised against Nigerians. The Nigerian government weighed in economically and diplomatically against South Africa and, under Obasanjo, contributed raw cash to the anti-apartheid struggle, nationalised British Petroleum (on 30/7/79) and refused to sell petroleum to South Africa. It also punished countries and businesses doing business with the apartheid regime. Nigeria roared and the world listened; indeed, there was a country! The cash contribution of Nigeria to the anti-apartheid struggle, according to South African official sources, was $61bn, while we lost up to $40bn by not selling oil to South Africa. We also made Black South Africans honorary Nigerians by issuing them with Nigerian passports, took their students into our schools, and hosted their revolutionaries, including Thabo Mbeki and Nelson Mandela (hosted by the late Mbazulike Amaechi). Nigeria made the highest investment globally in the anti-apartheid cause, and because of our church-mind and Afrocentrism, we did not attach any conditions! The Americans, French and Brits would have tied the assistance in perpetuity to their natural resources.
“Today, these South African Blacks have barbarically turned against Nigerians and other Black Africans, killing and maiming our people, destroying their businesses, hounding them like common criminals and chasing them away from South Africa, which they had helped to redeem and to build.”
We fought with ALL our might and all our resources against those who held our South African brethren by their ‘blokos’ – those who subdued them with unimaginable savagery, fed them with bread of sorrow and water of affliction and gave them the type of treatment that was worse than what the Pharaoh did to the Israelites. Today, these South African Blacks have barbarically turned against Nigerians and other Black Africans, killing and maiming our people, destroying their businesses, hounding them like common criminals and chasing them away from South Africa, which they had helped to redeem and to build. They have ingloriously and abominably bitten the fingers that generously fed them! The March & March movement dragged foreign Blacks out of hospital beds, drove their children away from schools, looted and destroyed their shops, brutally attacked, killed and maimed some of them and forced them to flee South Africa without their assets and families. They went to South Africa in search of the proverbial green pastures. Some of them succeeded to a large extent, but they have been forced to return as destitute, with nothing apart from the clothes on their bodies.
Our brothers are accused of being illegal migrants, ‘taking over our jobs’ and democratising the drug business in South Africa. Well, out of about 500 Nigerians screened by the South African Home Office, only two were found to be without documents. Furthermore, no Nigerian was involved in one of the biggest drug hauls in South Africa, worth 2 billion rand, which involved two Mexicans and two South Africans. The Mexicans are free in South Africa today, but the Blacks are not. One of their sisters reminded them that if there was no demand for drugs, there would not have been supplies. And if Nigerians and Blacks committed any known offence, they should be treated according to the countries’ laws rather than this crude resort to self-help. The whites and coloured, who humiliated, colonised and cornered their resources, are free; they are saints. Of course, when they tried this rubbish with whites, they shot them point-blank, and they fled with their tails between their legs. Within a week of the forced departure of the Black brethren, they are already regretting and suffering the backlash. Factories are closed because those who operated the machines were mostly Black Africans; the shops are closed and the roads are empty, and transporters have no passengers and are unable to redeem their hire-purchase obligations (continues next week).
Ik Muo, PhD, Dept of Business Administration, Olabisi Onabanjo University, Ago-Iwoye. 08033026625
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