WANJAWA: Ideological idiocy of makwerekwere: When Africans become foreigners in Africa

There is something profoundly disturbing about an African being chased through an African street by another African while being told to "go back home." One cannot help but ask: Where exactly is home? Nowhere is this contradiction more painfully visible than in South Africa's recurring xenophobic attacks.

The victims are not strangers from distant continents. They are fellow Africans whose greatest offence is crossing an artificial border in search of opportunity. Once there, they acquire a label that has become painfully familiar—makwerekwere. A word that does far more than identify a foreigner. It strips fellow Africans of dignity, belonging and, in the worst cases, their very right to live.

The explanation offered for these attacks is almost always the same. Foreigners are taking jobs. Foreigners are responsible for crime. Foreigners are overwhelming public services. Foreigners are making life unbearable for ordinary South Africans.

It is an argument that sounds convincing until one pauses to ask a simple question.

If every foreign African left South Africa tomorrow morning, would unemployment disappear by sunset? Would electricity suddenly become reliable? Would corruption evaporate? Would inequality vanish? Would hospitals function efficiently? Would the economy miraculously begin growing again?

The answer is obvious.

South Africa's challenges did not arrive carrying foreign passports.

The country has wrestled for decades with structural unemployment, weak economic growth, staggering inequality, corruption, failing public institutions and policy uncertainty. These are deep-rooted problems that neither began with migration nor can be solved by attacking migrants. Yet difficult problems demand difficult solutions, while blaming foreigners offers an easy emotional release.

History has a name for that. It is called scapegoating.

Whenever societies become anxious, they search for someone visible to blame. The target changes with time, but the psychology remains remarkably constant. Yesterday it was religion. Another era blamed race. Today, in parts of South Africa, the convenient enemy is simply the African who happened to be born on the wrong side of a colonial border.

There is a painful irony here that should make every South African pause.

During apartheid, the rest of Africa did not ask whether South Africa's suffering was its responsibility. They welcomed exiles into their communities. They trained liberation fighters. They offered scholarships to South African students.

They mobilised diplomatic pressure against the apartheid regime and, in many cases, paid a heavy economic and military price for doing so. In 1976, 28 African nations boycotted the Montreal Olympics in solidarity with South Africa.

They understood something that appears to be fading from our collective memory: that the freedom of one African nation depended upon the solidarity of all African nations.

That history matters because nations, like individuals, are judged not only by what they remember but also by what they choose to forget. The tragedy unfolding today is therefore not merely one of xenophobia. It is one of historical amnesia.

None of this suggests that immigration should be unmanaged. Every sovereign state has a legitimate right to secure its borders, regulate migration and deport those who violate immigration laws through due process. That is the responsibility of government.

But there is an enormous moral and legal distance between enforcing immigration law and burning another person's shop.

There is an equally vast difference between protecting borders and unleashing mobs against people whose only crime is speaking with a different accent. Violence is not border control. Arson is not public policy. Murder is not patriotism.

Perhaps what is most troubling is how quickly economic frustration can erase historical gratitude. The same continent that once mobilised to isolate apartheid South Africa now watches fellow Africans being isolated within democratic South Africa. The nation whose liberation inspired the world risks diminishing that legacy every time an African is attacked.  

Even more troubling is the illusion that xenophobia solves anything. It creates no jobs. It builds no factories. It repairs no schools. It fixes no hospitals. It restores no electricity. It reduces neither corruption nor inequality.

What it does exceptionally well is redirect public anger away from those entrusted with governing and towards vulnerable people who possess neither the power to create national problems nor the authority to solve them.

The real contest is therefore not between South Africans and migrants. It is between truth and convenience. Truth demands that governments confront unemployment with economic reform, corruption with accountability, failing institutions with competent leadership and inequality with inclusive growth. Convenience merely asks citizens to blame those who speak differently.

One path builds nations. The other burns them.

The lesson is clear. Nations do not become stronger by turning the powerless into scapegoats. They become stronger when citizens demand accountability from those with the power to govern.

As Kenya deepens its commitment to regional integration through the East African Community and the African Continental Free Trade Area, our pan-African ideals will be tested not by speeches delivered at summits but by how we treat every African who seeks dignity within our borders.

The word makwerekwere should therefore serve as a warning to the entire continent. It reminds us how easily fear can erase history, how quickly hardship can silence humanity and how fragile African solidarity becomes when politics divides those whom history united.