African Political Analysis Think-Tank Vignettes

There is a famous African proverb among the Chewa People: Those who don’t ask eat the wax! The moral is that those who seek to understand are likely to make less mistakes. The wax talked about here is that of the bee hives. The proverb points out that those who may not know and don't ask may end up eating the hives and not the honey. Russia and Africa share a thing in common: they are notoriously misunderstood and misrepresented in the more accessible forms of media. Also the subject of Russia or Africa is one that is not popular and easily dismissed as purely academic. Africa is depicted as a continent divided in three: The area North of Limpopo and South of Sahara (aka Sub-Sahara Africa); Republic of South Africa; and the North Africa. These names, make it is possible for the pen to label Africa in reinforced stereotypes. In cutting up Africa and mislabeling her to fit simplistic stereotypical shelves, we all fail to genuinely be part of the crafters of positive dev...

Instead of filling the answer as Xenophobia, let us analyse how we can use Humanization to inform policies on how people treat each other.  This will make it possible for people to engage in humane acts as opposed to inhumane ones toward each other. Xenophobia, is used to explain the inhumane treatment of perceived non-South African citizens that led to deaths and destruction of livelihoods in South Africa in September 2019.   Foreign-owned shops, were looted or burnt (expropriation) or both during riots in the Johannesburg suburb of Turffontein on September 2, 2019. This form of violence targeting foreign nationals in South Africa, tells one of the need for scripted operating procedures that address how Africans can relate with each other. They should not take anything for granted.  We risk shelving our responsibilities to other humans. We also risk not analyzing the historical abuses, precarious and insidious legacy of Apartheid to South Africa in pa...