COMMENTARY
Global village no more for Africans
Story by MUTUMA MATHIU
Publication Date: 9/4/2005
http://www.nationmedia.com/dailynation/nmgcontententry.asp?category_id=25&newsid=56445
There was always a whiff of the abattoir about the Malaysians and Africans. By day, they were students at some of Britains best universities. They spent the night in factories and butcher shops, murdering animals or wiping supermarket floors.
Europe is awash with millions of Africans students, professionals, bogus asylum seekers, genuine asylum seekers and loads and loads of labourers. They pick, pack, push, pull; they clean the streets, wash the dead and the nearly dead and generally do the important jobs that Europeans wont do because they are disgusting, demeaning or their income puts the labourer at slightly below the welfare line.
Many live in a grey area where they exist but dont quite exist. They eke out an extremely difficult hand-to-mouth life, living in abhorrent conditions in crime-infested migrant neighbourhoods. Many of the Africans grew up in village hovels and had no hope in hell of getting a job. For them, a condemned tenement in Paris is a step up the food chain. But some are well-to-do professionals who have traded the cushy comforts of their secure jobs for the dehumanising adventure of wintry menial jobs. Ten years ago, I met a Nigerian engineer who quit his job in the oil industry and was working in a chicken factory in North Yorkshire. His wife had talked him into it, I heard.
I can almost bet that today he has obtained "status", that is, regularised his stay either formally or by buying a bogus British passport, and has got a job as a clerk, mail sorter or as a supermarket check-out guy. A step up in the world, you might say.
People used to talk about a global village. For the African, I get the feeling, the world is becoming a more hostile, colder, bigger place. Walking through a Western airport a couple of months ago, I was "randomly" selected for a security check three times. They swabbed my pockets and hands for explosives residue, used a dog to check for drugs in my hand luggage, put my shoes and belt through machines and a thorough physical examination.
Its not luck, its the comely colour of my skin that won me attention. This is not a wholesale condemnation of xenophobia and racism in rich nations. No, I know African countries which are nearly as xenophobic as Nazi Germany. And some European countries, such as Britain, have had very welcoming policies: They allow mad mullahs to preach the destruction of Britain from the cobblestones of London.
Rather, I want to propose the hypothesis that the pick-pack-push life of African immigrants in Europe is becoming rather more difficult, perilous, and perhaps portends as many dangers as the Aids, poverty and low life expectancy in the villages which spawned them. Evidence?
One. Ten years ago, you went to the UK without the necessity of a visa. Two years ago, the British High Commission would only issue me with a visa after the intervention of an appeals tribunal. The Entry Clearance Officer was probably not impressed by my attitude that I had no ambition whatsoever to become a packer-picker-pusher, I had a good life here at home and a swell job which paid better than hers thank you very much.
Two. Antony Walker, a Liverpudlian black teenager was recently walking his white girlfriend to the bus stop. He was taunted by a couple of racist guys who proceeded to bludgeon him to death with an axe, in what sections of the British Press are rather gleefully referring to as the Axe Murder.
Three. In London, Zainab Kalokoh was attending the christening of her niece (I think), six-month-old Adama. As she cradled the baby, a gun gang burst into the hall and killed her with a single bullet to the head.
Four. Early in the week, six people living in an abandoned apartment in Paris, died in a fire. Twenty-five families, half of them legally in France, lived like animals. The Globe and Mail quoted some functionary as describing the conditions in the building as "dangerous and inadmissible" and a neighbour saying the immigrants circumstances were "frightening". She recalled seeing the Africans fetching water from a spigot (Americanism for "tap") in the street.
Five. A week ago, 17 people, among them 14 children and most of them African immigrants perished in another crumbling Parisian tenement inferno. In April, 24 souls went up in smoke, the majority of them African, again in a Paris flea dive hotel. The International Herald Tribune quoted the Deputy Mayor of Paris as saying: "The hypothesis of arson is not excluded."
The hypothesis of a Jean-Marie Le Penn follower torching Africans sleeping off their packing-picking-pushing fatigue is irresistible. As more Africans arrive in Europe, the corollary in my view is a rise in racism and racist attacks. The ascendancy of the Right Wing in Europe is cause for concern. Will European conservatism give rise to another Hitler?
And why does the world dislike us so? Is it because we are ugly or smell? I know in some Western supermarkets, the Africans who sweep the floors and dust the goods are routinely sprayed with a deodorant. There is bigotry, there is the fear of the different. But even more important, the reasons why Africans are treated very, very badly are to be found, I think, in Victor Hugo. "We live in a squalid society. Success: That is the message seeping drop by drop, down from the overriding corruptionSuccess in principle and for its own sake. Prosperity presupposes ability. Win a lottery-prize and you are a clever man. Winners are adulated."
They dont like us because we are broke. A guy washes up on the beaches of Europe, down on his luck and ready to do battle with chickens. Who is going to care whether he burns in a condemned building? Jacques Chirac?
So, before you take your passport for the visa prayers, ask: Wouldnt it be a lot easier to just marry into money?
How much mail storage do you get for free? Yahoo! Mail gives you 1GB!
Get Yahoo! Mail
_______________________________________________ Ugandanet mailing list [email protected] http://kym.net/mailman/listinfo/ugandanet % UGANDANET is generously hosted by INFOCOM http://www.infocom.co.ug/
