Member of Parliament (MP) for the Asawase constituency, Mubarak Mohammed Muntaka, has said that Ghanaians should boycott South African products in response to an outbreak of xenophobic attacks in South Africa.
Xenophobia against African immigrants in South Africa is no new occurrence. Instances of xenophobia against foreign African nationals have been occurring in the country since before democratization in 1994.
These occurrences increased post 1994, with the South African music group Boom Shaka releasing a song in 1995 titled Makwerekwere (See video below) , a term that has been used recently in a derogative manner.
Over the last few days the resurgence of xenophobic sentiments has set African immigrants on edge, with some Ghanaians openly expressing their willingness to come back to Ghana.
Local police has had to use rubber bullets, water, and tear gas to disperse a local protest against immigration in Mamelodi, a suburb of Pretoria.
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In response to the heightened xenophobic sentiments, Hon. Mubarak Mohammed Muntaka has called for a national boycott of all south African products as a way to send a strong message conveying displeasure towards the recent outbreak.
“Can all Africans avoid any product from South Africa as a way of showing them that we depend on each other?” he quizzed.
“…Since the xenophobic attacks in 2015, I have not bought anything in South Africa apart from the food and water that I drink and I said it in the Pan Africa parliament because that was my protest as an individual to show that I’ll never go to their market to buy anything and I have stuck to that up to date. Mr Speaker, yes, we need to be diplomatic but the only way that a blind man can see that the eye of the sighted is really red is for him to give him/her a knock.”
“I think the time has come for African people to unite around this and at least not to also violently attack their properties in our country and not to violently attack their citizens in our country but to boycott their products.”
“According to him, “if we begin to boycott any South African product, they‘ll begin to feel the heat and that will let them know that we’ll not countenance this”.
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