XENOPHOBIA
Xenophobia of recent has been
trending both on the social media and over the conventional media. It is no
longer news as we heard in South Africa Xenophobia is ongoing. This has made
the word so popular but I am not sure everybody knows what it means. Most at
times when something of this nature happens, people get carried away by the euphoria
and hardly can contemplate on the meaning.
Xenophobia comes from the Ancient Greek
word (Xenos), meaning “Strange”, “Foreigner”, and (Phobos), meaning “Fear”.
According to Oxford Dictionary,
Xenophobia means “deep rooted fear towards foreigners” and the fear of the “Unfamiliar”.
Aside all these definitions, there is another angle to it. According to a
scholar, Andreas Wimmer, It is an
element of a political struggle about who has the right to be cared for by the
state and society. According to Wikipedia. In other words, Xenophobia arises
when people feel that their entitlement to benefit from the government is being
subverted by other people’s rights (Wikipedia).
History
While writing on this topic, I had
desired to probe into the history, how it all started and how we got to where
we are. This is not an attempt to go deep into the history nor to rewrite the
history but to give a brief background of it. I was able to trace this to
Ancient Greek denigration of foreigners as “Barbarians” (Wikipedia). Xenophobia
as it were is happening everywhere even though people might not know that they
are practicing it. In the case of the Greek, they believed to be superior
beings and their culture superior than others: which means all other people are
inferior to them and what that means is, they are only good for slaves.
Xenophobia sponsors and breeds hatred for others. A lot of people often mix
xenophobia with racism: We must not confuse the words because in the case of
xenophobia, you can hate someone from a foreign country yet have the same race.
A typical example is that of South Africa: The perceived ‘Foreigners’ they are
attacking are Africans, their brothers! This cannot be racism.
There was a speech credited to
Manius Acilius in which he said, “There, as you know, there were Macedonians
and Thracians and Illyrians, all most warlike nations, here Syrians and Asiatic
Greeks, the most worthless people among mankind and born for slavery.” This is
the worst form of denigration of human race.
Xenophobic
Attacks
Xenophobic attacks starts when a
leader speaks against others in a denigrated manner as we have stated above.
There is no way a leader will speak out in a manner that Andreas Wimmer spoke
and would not spark xenophobic attacks against such people. The Zulu King
Goodwill Zwelithini Kabhakuzulu in April 2015 in 20th precisely said
that, “Migrants should pack their bags and leave.” according to Wikipedia. That
word that looked ordinary caused the death of about 7 people and causing the
displacement of over 2000 foreigners. He is still there as the king of that
land, no investigation have been heard and no prosecution.
The sole aim of this article is to
bring to fore what xenophobia is to make people understand because understanding
is what will help us to deal with it better.
Manifestations
This is happening virtually everywhere,
you can see nations enacting laws to disfavor foreigners in order to allegedly
to put their nationals to gain upper hand in fear of subjugation. It has
happened in so many places - Asia, Malaysia, Africa, and Germany to mention a
few. Currently, the US is battling with this menace where The President signs
executive orders over illegal immigrants and other such laws that attracted
wide protests across America and beyond. What I mean here is that Xenophobia is
often attached to one particular situation but it is not the case; it is a lot
more than that. Xenophobia can occur within a country or state depending on the
situation. In Nigeria for example, there is the growing animosity between
ethnic groups and religious groups. All these can be a sort of xenophobia.
Anything that is foreign to you and you have phobia for is called xenophobia.
We have issues like indigene – settler crisis going on from state to state; all
these constitute what is known as xenophobia as the case may be.
Caleb Zadok
07031655913
Email: zadokcalebadiga@yahoo.com
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