South African Xenophobic attacks, countries should remain calm

By
Lydia Kukua Asamoah, GNA

Accra, Sept 6, GNA –
The Alliance for Christian Advocacy Africa (ACAA), a network of Christian
scholars, church leaders and other Christian professionals, has called for calm
among nations, especially Nigerians and Zambians affected by the xenophobic
attacks in South Africa.

The ACAA, which is
headed by the Reverend Kwabena Opuni-Frimpong, a Lecturer at the Department of
Religious Affairs, Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, Kumasi,
said, Nigerian and Zambian citizens did not need to retaliate by attacking
South Africans in their countries.

“The way to go is
not to say that you have killed us and so we are also going to kill you. You
have destroyed our shops, so we are also going to destroy your shops. We must
find a more civilised way of responding”, Rev Opuni-Frimpong said in an
interview with the Ghana News Agency on Friday.

“We are also
admonishing that nobody should use social media platforms to incite people to
respond to the attacks, especially in Ghana and in other African countries.

“The South African
Government must do more on what is happening in her country, Rev Opuni-Frimpong
stated.

He reminded South
African of the various roles countries like Nigeria and Ghana played in the
fight against apartheid in the 1980s, where Ghanaian moneys were used to train
some South Africans in Ghanaian universities for them to acquire better
education.

According to him,
the xenophobic phenomenon in South Africa was not a new thing, as same attacks
were meted out to African migrants in that country in 2008, 2015, 2017, 2018
and currently in 2019, and nothing deterring was done to the perpetrators.

He said it was not
just good enough for the South African government to just condemn and make open
statements of “investigating the attacks; but we don’t hear the report of the
investigations, we don’t hear of any sanctions, we don’t hear of any
punishments for the citizens who perpetuate such attacks.”

The Reverend
Minister said beyond the condemnation, South Africa must do more, because many
South African business people were also in other African nations exploring
business opportunities in countries like Nigeria, Ghana and many others.

He said such
businesses and people were being protected by other governments and so the
South African government had a duty to protect other nationals that were also
working in that country.

GNA