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Facing rising xenophobic threats and a June 30 deadline set by anti-immigration groups for them to leave, thousands of African foreign nationals in South Africa — including undocumented migrants and those in the country legally — are fleeing their homes or seeking repatriation as hostility and violence intensify.
Olúfẹ́mi Táíwò
Professor of Africana Studies
Olúfémi Táíwò, a professor of Africana studies at Cornell University, says the violence exposes what he calls a “shared hypocrisy” surrounding Ubuntu — a philosophy of communal humanity tied to South Africa’s “Rainbow Nation” identity.Táíwò says:“In recent years, African scholars, under the influence of Black South African scholars, politicians, and others, have worked assiduously to sell the world on the idea of Ubuntu — a communitarian ideal rooted in some of South Africa’s original cultures — as the quintessentially African philosophy of social relations designed to procure the best life for humans.“For those of us who never signed on to that ideology, it gives us no joy to see the country unravel under the strains of xenophobic attacks directed at fellow Blacks from the rest of the continent. It has become clear that the only color the Rainbow Nation cannot accommodate is expatriate continental African Black.”
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