The Special Assistant to the President on Foreign Affairs and
Diaspora, Abike Dabiri-Erewa on Saturday said South African politicians
fuel xenophobic attacks by telling citizens that foreigners, including
Nigerians, are dating their women and taking their jobs.
Speaking
on a television programme, she admitted that there were foreigners who
commit crime in South Africa, and they can be dealt with, but not by
discriminating against Nigerians or any other race or country, an online
news medium, The Cable reports.
Dabiri-Erewa who spoke on The
Osasu Show, noted that xenophobic attacks in South Africa were driven by
hate speech and misinformation.
She said, “There are people who
commit crime in South Africa, such people are in any country. If South
Africa is fighting crime; let it fight crime, not fight brothers and
sisters, who are legitimately working in South Africa,
“Don’t
forget that these attacks happened in the past. This is the seventh
attack. The last one was in 2015… the king of Zulu made some remarks
that were inciting, that led to the last attack.
“This particular
one, let’s look at the circumstances. Fine, there are economic issues
everywhere in the world. Politicians are campaigning and telling their
people, ‘you know what, drive these criminals away, they are taking your
jobs, and they are taking your women too’.”The SSA advised South Africa
companies operating in Nigeria to do more to educate South Africans on
the need to stop xenophobia.
She said, “Imagine MTN sending text messages to everyone in South Africa, saying Xenophobia is bad, don’t do this and that.
“They
should embark on some corporate social responsibility. Those
multinationals should get up and do something. DStv should be doing
various jingles on why xenophobia is bad, they should take over the
awareness campaign.
No comments:
Post a Comment