To be Black is to be foreign and Othered: Weaponising colonial borders to fracture PanAfrican unity

Okay, let’s talk about it.

Anywhere in the world, to be Black is to be foreign, always. Even in Africa. This is a widely accepted stance that has arguably become the selling point for most political parties in South Africa: Black foreign nationals are the problem. It is therefore important to recognize that not only is this ethno nationalism, anywhere on the continent (and history as well as this current moment shows that it’s everywhere), selective and opportunistic, but it is also deeply rooted in the set precepts of antiblackness. Oppressed people’s unfulfilled desire for the retributive justice for apartheid, colonialism, and slavery and ultimately the enduring oppression of white supremacist capitalist patriarchy, is often turned inward and intra-black violence becomes par for the course, triggered in an instant by the slightest event, in our communities and countries.

One such example of this internalised horizontal violence is the manufacturing of the image of the Black foreigner (whether tribal or national) as the putative figure of non-belonging and invasion. Very real and legitimate concerns of the people due to governance and administration failures, as well as deliberate external sabotage, are always so readily appropriated, doctored, weaponised, and redirected to orchestrate situations where the oppressed end up punching sideways or down instead of up. Other Black people, be they the migrant or the native, and the unrelenting and varied strategies—always presumed illegal, even when they are not always—continue to employ and negotiate, just to scramble and compete for scraps to survive end up being projected as the problem. 

The coordinated intensification of anti-(racialised) migrant violence in South Africa is not something that hasn’t happened elsewhere before or isn’t happening elsewhere now. In fact, countries like Ghana and Nigeria have their own history with such moments, and South Africa’s moment now coincides quite tellingly, with almost identical far right linked eruptions happening in the US, Europe, the UK, and elsewhere. You see, empire’s strength as it consumed the globe through its wars of conquest relied heavily on the construction of the racialized indigenes (the global majority) as the perpetual outsider. The farther away from empire’s centre (whiteness) one is, the more outsider, placeless, surplus, and undesirable one becomes. That is why and how there have also been many instances, at different moments, in different parts of the world, of xenophobia against other non-Black racialised groups based on race, ethnicity, religion, and nationality. Black people occupy the furthest point from the centre, wherever we are. 

Oppressed people turn pain inward, punching sideways at the manufactured image of Black foreigners.

The (post) colonial nation state as we know it, and its borders are technologies of capitalist and colonial domination and captivity. Not only is the nation state a commodity, it is also an infrastructure of confinement. That is to say, a carceral institution and geography where nationhood (citizenship) is not simply a marker of belonging/legitimacy, but it’s also a tool for containment as well as enforcement meant to keep the captive “other” out, and to confine, (and deploy when required), the native “other” already captive within. The latter, the citizen comprador, is mobilized time and again, as the enforcer and the muscle for empire/capital (the de facto owners of the country) against the other, and ultimately against their own interests, when the system is threatened and needs to regain its footing. When the other modes of suppression and manufacturing consent and compliance from the citizen masses becomes ineffective, a distraction becomes necessary to sow seeds of division and balkanisation which will inevitably lead to the “foreigner” moniker eventually being applied to the Black native too because the racial configuration of foreignness is always Black, be it the native Black or the migrant Black.

“The racial configuration of foreignness is always Black; colonial divisions will inevitably destroy us.” Photo by Tope J. Asokere/ Pexels

Our legality is precarious and can always be contested, viewed with suspicion, and easily revoked. After all, Black South Africans were themselves once legally foreigners in South Africa—which itself is a bordered country that only came into existence in 1910 under British rule and Boer collaboration—and only became full legal citizens as recently as 1994. This is why even the native Black is also vulnerable to being perceived as foreign or not belonging, even within South Africa’s borders. This is why provinces are still treated like little ethnostates by many, and it is only ever Black people who are perceived as migrants (migrant labour) when they move to another province and are also periodically instructed to go back to their provinces when there is a surge in resource scarcity and insecurity.

This is the reality of the Black condition, regardless of whether one is native or not. That is why belonging continues to elude us, whether you are a Zimbabwean in South Africa or a Tsonga person in KZN, or a Ndebele and (vs) a Shona person in Zimbabwe. Black people (native or foreign) whom empire has cast as the true invaders and outsiders are set up to always experience perpetual dispossession, displacement, and fugitivity; always in flight from and in pursuit of. 

Cast as perpetual outsiders by empire, division will destroy us all unless we reject this anti-black script through radical love and Pan-African unity.

This moment, and many others like it, are counter revolutionary. The eery alignment with right wing, fascist, white supremacist, and imperialist talking points, sentiments, and tactics of March and March, its partners and supporters (including the “moderate” ones), as well as a lot of their more reactionary critics who also seem to be reading from the same antiblack script is proof of that. If we are going to stand any chance at all at turning the tide, we need to be honest with ourselves. The fact is, South Africa has a xenophobia/afrophobia/antiblackness problem. Africa has a xenophobia/afrophobia/antiblackness problem. The world has a xenophobia/afrophobia/antiblackness problem. It is all by design. 

We need to acknowledge this and confront it. Refusal and not denial is the key. Historically, it was only through global Pan-African unity, that we ever stood any chance. Even the enemy knows that (hence divide and conquer). I know knowing this and knowing too that others who have chosen to sell out and play into the colonising forces’ scheme also know this (very well) and still have chosen as they have, makes hope, radical love, and even radical forgiveness (even as the harm is occurring) for and of each 

other feel quite impossible right now, but it is absolutely necessary. Especially given what’s at stake. Otherwise, division will destroy us all. 

This article was first published by Doreen Ray Gaura it is published here with permission of the writer.

* Doreen Ray Gaura writes here in her personal capacity.

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