Aaron Gono
“Part of the answer lies in something the historian George Mosse understood with striking clarity.
Fascism did not succeed because it was original. It succeeded because it spoke directly to an emotional vacuum already present within society. It drew on existing hopes, fears, longings, prejudices, hatred, and utopian fantasies—reassembling them into a powerful political movement”- Deep Sharma – Fascism in India.
South Africa is a very much industrialised country in sub-Saharan Africa. It possesses all heavy industries you can think of. It also used to own a nuclear plant which it decommissioned in 1991 after signing the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty ( NPT). I think it was a big mistake which South Africa took because if it kept the pieces, Southern Africa was going to be under its umbrella, as the US does with its NATO allies, and also spreading into the Middle East. Now South Africa is at the mercy of the US, if it held its arsenal, it was going to have a leverage like Iran.
When Donald John Trump came into power on 6 January 2024; he promised peace, dis-engaging the US from forever wars. Instead he did the opposite, he started poking holes in Somalia, Nigeria, South Africa and nominating other shit-hole countries to prepare for Armageddon. Zimbabwe is one such country; after its fall out with England, Trump inherited the fight against it, through the Zimbabwe Democracy Recovery Act (ZIDERA). The bill was made by his predecessors but is now mutating. But currently most African countries mean nothing in the power matrix; Russia, North Korea, Iran, China, Israel, Pakistan, and America rule the roost.
On 29 June 2026, at around 06: 15 am, I saw a convoy of Besedi buses enroute to Malawi (Nyasaland), carrying the so-called legal and illegal foreigners from South Africa to their respective homeland. I was at Gokomere bus stop enroute to Mvuma. It was not the government’ s initiative to push them out. This time it was a young beautiful lady by the name Jacinta Ngobe- Zuma. I am not sure if she is related to the former President of South Africa, Jacob Zuma. But right now she has attained celebrity status in South Africa because of her cause. “Abahambe” loosely translated in Shona as ” Ngavainde”, is her populist movement to eject foreigners from Egoli.
The lady after graduating from Harvard University, America, she came back with new ideas of what are the causes of South Africans to suffer in their land of plenty. You know, going to study overseas, open up your mind swiftly. You develop a fascist ideology and you can get big like Mussolini, without much hard work. In Zimbabwe we had our late writer and radical, Charles Dambudzo Marechera, after dropping from Oxford University. He came back to a newly liberated Zimbabwe in 1981, and caused much pain to our newly elected nationalist leaders. He respected no authority and he wanted answers from his leaders. But he wasn’t a xenophobe.
So, this Jac, was on the ground since last year advocating for foreigners to go back where they belong. Her project got and still get much airplay from mainstream media in South Africa. It is amplified daily by echoes from these corners as a good cause. The moment South Africa eject its unholy brothers and sisters from Africa, the country will retain its former 1994 rainbow nation glamour. Everything she is doing is good for South Africans, poor service delivery is caused by foreigners. Spaza shops must be owned by South Africans and not by Ethiopians and Eritreans. After foreigners leave their jobs, every South African gonna be great again.
So everything that is breaking down or not working is caused by Zimbabweans, Mocambicans, Malawians, Nigerians, etc. Criminals are foreigners and no South Africans is in jail because of carjacking, murder, money heist issues, etc. Makwerekwere is derogatory name used to paint black all foreigners as uncouth and inane lot. In actual fact black South Africans are conditioned to blame their cousins from outside their boarders as people who are eating their lunch. No whiteman is a foreigner to them, they were also conditioned by apartheid to hate themselves (gas lighting).
MacCarthyism is what Jac went to Harvard College to learn the tricks to sow division in South Africa; and make sure the country becomes a pariah in Africa. The results were quickly displayed when the country’s national football team was playing games in the world cup in Mexico. Africans were cheering Mexico instead of their culture of supporting every African team in the tournament. The division had been sown by a mere overzealous and a quack activist.
I remember when the ANC was banned by the apartheid regime of PW Botha’s government; the late Oliver Tambo during his visits to Zimbabwe, he would be accommodated at Nyamutamba Hotel, Chitungwiza. This was done to avoid South African spies roaming in 5 star hotels in the CBD hunting them. And his security were plain clothes guys in dark glasses armed to the teeth. Jacob Zuma spent his time in Mocambique, running the intelligence of the ANC ‘ s Umkhonto we Sizwe from there, it was his permanent base. These host countries are not saying its: payback time. They are simply not happy about how their citizens are being treated in South Africa.
South Africa did attract foreigners from the days of Cecil John Rhodes, at Kimberly Diamond Mines in the mid 20th century. In 1900/ 01 there was Wenela (Witwatersrand Native Labour Association), it was a recruiting agency set up by gold mines to source migrant workers from across Southern Africa. Their hunting grounds were Rhodesia, Nyasaland, Batswana, and Lourenco Marques. That’s why in South Africa you have Bandas, Phiris, Moyo, Dube, Maphosa, Maluleke, Chauke, etc. It is not by default but by design. So, the moment we take ignorant ” ama Ubers ” to run the show, we are just setting a trap for ourselves. That’s why you see nationals from Zimbabwe, Malawi, Botswana, and Mozambique, bubbling, bubbling in your country. They think we are one, not knowing that some gate-keepers think otherwise.
South Africa is a magnet to every person sanely living around this globe. You can’t blame the particles attracted to the magnet because you own it. The magnet attracts those who have the chacteristics to it, namely hard workers, trained technicians, doctors, nurses, teachers, horticulturists, agronomists etc. There is no employer who can hire a till operator who can’t read up to 3. Because these entrepreneurs expect outcomes not outputs.
Jac’s argument is political, and lacks economic background she blames other African leaders for destroying their economies by corruption and mismanagement. She is forgetting that the reason why blacks are on blacks in her country is also of mismanagement and corruption. Remember the Guptas, Eskom, Saps (Mkwananzi), Phala Phala, Bloemfontein’s dairy scandal, etc. Even Donald Trump is accused of corruption in the US. Remember industries are closing in South, the Rand mines are no more. That’s why you see many people competing for few resources. We can’t say P W Botha or de Klerk were good because cheap populism the Herman Mashabas, Jac Ngobe-Zuma, etc , are peddling were not marketable by then because everything was working.
“Man is not what he thinks he is, he is what he hides.”
—André Malraux
