South African authorities, working with the Ghanaian High Commission and the Department of Home Affairs, oversaw the weekend repatriation of more than 650 nationals through OR Tambo.
Dr Kwame Nkrumah opened our continental eyes to the true meaning of exploitation and inequality when he wrote his ground-shaking book entitled Africa Must Unite in 1963, in which he launched damaging criticism against neo-colonialism as well as the danger of hinging our hopes on our former colonial masters for economic salvation.
In his moving autobiography, he also admonished the exploitation of man by man regardless of their race, where he describes ‘African Parasitism’ as a situation where the custodian of hospitality is used and abused by his visitors who fail to acknowledge ingratitude as anything but monstrous.
He graphically states: “It is a custom among Africans that any relative, however distant the relationship may be, can at any time arrive at your home and remain under your roof for as long as he wants. Nobody questions his arrival, how long he intends to stay, or his eventual departure.
This hospitality is sometimes very much abused, for if one member of the family does well for himself, he usually finds his compound filled with men and women, all claiming some distant kinship, and all prepared to live at his expense until the money runs out.” In our illegal immigrant’s discourse, African parasitism has been like a hidden wound.
