France is burning; Africa, be afraid

If France were an African country, somebody would have called the scenes of violent protests and extensive burning of stuff over the last week a civil war.

Some have called it a civil war and France a failed state. But most of them are conservative politicians and commentators, and white racists who want to see the full might of the French state deployed to smash the “immigrant” African, Arab and Muslim “vermin” and “terrorists”—as they have variously labelled the protesters.

This is a complex one. It all started on the night of June 27 after police shot dead a 17-year-old boy who failed to stop when ordered to by traffic police. Nahel Merzouk happened to be of Algerian descent. France was a brutal colonial power in Algeria. Up to 1.5 million Algerians were killed and millions more displaced in the eight-year struggle for independence there that began in 1954.

That colonial heritage means many people of Algerian descent (and from other former French colonies in Africa) are French citizens. They grieve that they have endured colonial-era discrimination in France all these years. As it happens, they are poorer than white French people. And the predominantly white police mistreat them.

Violence

Nahel’s killing, therefore, dredged up this enormous archive of hurt and exploded into violence and looting. The far-right and nativists are now energised, calling for all immigrants, Africans and Arabs to be kicked out. Their reaction, too, is from a broader problem; what they see as out-of-control immigration by people of black and brown skin who aren’t Christians. This fear of “replacement” and the ugly politics it has kicked up in Europe and America is both deplorable and understandable.

Even in Africa, we tend to react very badly and have responded with massacre and near-genocide, or even genocide, against both foreigners (xenophobia in South Africa, anti-Somali purges in Kenya) and our fellow citizens who we think are threatening to take over our lands (Kenya will be familiar with this from the 2007-2008 post-election violence in the Rift Valley).

The shocking scenes of arson in France have certainly played into the extreme right’s hands. No defence can be made of the violence in a liberal democratic context. What we have witnessed in France should be a reason for the French, actually the West, and Africa to lose sleep.

Sharp rise

There has been a sharp rise in the number of illegal migrants arriving in Europe this year. So far, nearly 88,000. Likewise, the number dying in, mostly, the Mediterranean Sea as their overcrowded and rickety boats sink is close to a record 2,000. At this rate, the deaths could be near 4,000 by yearend, which has been beyond the most pessimistic modelling until recently.

Some argue this immigration directly results from European colonialism; payback, sort of. And the global inequality rich nations have spawned is a vital driver of the waves of migration being witnessed. There is a case to be made for migration: It is how the world has been formed. Yet it has to be recognised that the numbers heading to Europe are becoming unsustainable.

Therefore, this is a European and African problem (we will leave the Middle East and Asia bit to our brothers and sisters there for now).

There is no nobility in having thousands of Africans making these dangerous journeys out of economic desperation at home. The governments they elect (and even those that steal or grab their way to power) are responsible for creating better lives and opportunities for their citizens.

Many migrants are returned home. I have ever witnessed the sight of some Africans being forcibly returned. It is scary; the screaming, the battle with their deporters to subdue them. Then millions more want to leave for Europe but can’t. Soon, the thousands who are deported will join a common cause with the millions who couldn’t go, and they will burn a lot of this Africa down. The scenes in France will be kindergarten stuff in comparison.

Deported

For Europe, meanwhile, nothing they are doing will work. Those who are deported and those who want to head to Europe but are unable to won’t give up. They will just bide their time.

Europe is ageing. These desperate young Africans, Middle Easterners and Asians are growing in numbers. A day will come when, in their millions, they will over-run old Europeans too feeble to fight.

The fix here might be smart co-option. Allow immigration. But most importantly, ensure that migrants are included in the economy and become rich. You avoid the French spectacle but also, as we see with rich Asians in the UK and wealthy Africans in the US, they tend to become politically conservative and hostile to new migrants from the very places from where they came.

We say it is a fix because it will only last for a while. But it buys Europe some time as it figures out a long-term solution.

Mr Onyango-Obbo is a journalist, writer and curator of the “Wall of Great Africans”. @cobbo3