Of Africa’s Shallow Sahara Graves and the Mediterranean Waves

The shame of Africa is once more made manifest by recent events at sea and in the arid. Hundreds die and many more get stranded in the sands of Sahara and the waves of the Mediterranean in a tortuous bid to escape excruciating livelihoods that have become their lot in many countries of the continent. They run away from famine. They run away from bad governance. But they also run away from themselves in a queer push of foolhardiness. Sadly, a good number of them end up emptying into the bowels of deep waters and sinking sand. Call it twisted fate perhaps. To be sure, this is not a new phenomenon. Only that the scale of recent occurrence has assumed alarming proportions.

The world wakes up too often these days to news of a ship wreck or pirate attack on travellers or drowning of a bunch of hapless African migrants attempting to sail the restive seas to Europe. Recently, over 700 migrant souls were lost in a shipwreck off the coast of Libya while roughing the waves to Europe. Migrants who manage to reach the shores of Spain or Portugal and elsewhere in the white man’s land are treated to series of profiling, prejudices and sometimes rude returns back home. Some of those caught in sea rage are however lucky to be rescued and sometimes receive reluctant warmth from weary border patrol agents in Europe. Clearly, a humanitarian crisis being imported into Europe clobbers the territorial integrity and security of the Schengen countries which have made migration a front burner regional integration (and political campaign) issue. Leaders of the continent are reportedly contemplating refugee sharing quotas for member countries as part of pos- sible solutions to the problem. But can Europe battle this problem in isolation without collaboration or inputs from Africa? This question is germane in the search for solutions to the crisis.

But more important in the scheme of things is a sincere examination of the conditions that have given rise to this South - North movement of distressed humans desperate to escape their sorry lot. What manner of man would set out to deliberately dare the elements and damn the rage of fiery waves of the deep sea in pursuit of what is clearly a suicide mission? This is extreme desperation. Not shielded by the shelter of a fortified vessel nor guided by the spirit of adventures like of the ancient mariner, the African migrant risks lives, limbs and generations unborn in chase of a better life that may never be. He or she seems to be moved by the bleak future confronting him either way: ride the stormy sea and risk sudden death or stay home and die in instalments.

The deadly transit is made even more precarious owing to the nefarious activities of human traffickers who take advantage of the situation to ply their trade. Reports say migrants are made to cough out princely sums of money for traffickers who promise to take them to Eldorado in Europe but only end up worsening their plight. Indigent family folks get to eke out meagre contributions and hand out the haul to these human traffickers who are seen as offering a service if not even a favour by promising to get a nominated son or daughter into Europe. The traffickers often operate in a ring that also involves compromised security officials at border posts and powerful individuals in Europe that receive these migrants and subject them to a life of slavery and sex tourism for profit. It turns out that these tormented souls find themselves in further torment should they succeed in the dangerous voyages.

Indeed, the grim reality of life in many parts of Africa as presented in facts and figures of experiential living is hugely responsible for this unfortunate tide of events. Global and regional development institutions provide research and empirical findings which are available to those who care to seek. Ironically, the mostly uneducated hewers of wood and drawers of water that daily eke out subsistence from a hapless existence in the continent can only find such figures and statistics meaningless assuming they care to know. Take the global picture of poverty for instance and one would understand why the dreadful migration tide steams down South and billows up to the North. In a 2011 statistics on the spread of poverty by the World Bank, Sub-Sahara Africa has 46.8% (poverty headcount ration) of its population living in poverty compared to 0.5% in Europe and Central Asia while South Asia has 24.5%. This explains why apart from Africans, Asians from the southern part of the continent are among the largest victims of unsafe migration through the Mediterranean to Europe.

Poverty in Africa as portrayed above is unfortunately accentuated by high levels of unemployment, civil and internecine strife, low maternal and infant mortality rates, high levels of illiteracy and lack of access to basic services like education, health and shelter among others. Life expectancy is accordingly tottering on the low in most of the continent. These are unpalatable if not unbearable conditions that drive the thriving but extremely dangerous migration across the seas. But are these conditions avoidable? Are they mere issues of misgovernance or causal effects of the historical dialectics of development of which slavery, colonialism and their contemporary adjuncts like neo-colonialism, westernisation and globalisation are cornerstones? While the above questions may be argued in the affirmative it is of serious concern and unacceptable that after over half a century of self governance in most of Africa, political leadership in the continent can still perpetuate or tolerate wittingly or unwittingly, conditions that continue to put its citizens in fetters. Reports upon reports have produced conclusions that corruption in public office and governance in Africa have been the bane of development and creation of egalitarian conditions where opportunities, risks and rewards are distributed in a fair and transparent manner in order to achieve socially stable societies.

The continent must rise above selfinflicted limitations and corruption in the public sector and take the lead in pulling itself from the malady of these shameful migrations. There is urgent need now more than ever to redress inequities and oppressive economic conditions that have driven thousands of citizens from their native lands to seek the proverbial greener pastures on the other side of the turbulent sea. Economic subjugation perpetrated by or condoned by the state (and its agents) against its own citizens must be vigorously confronted headlong now by all stakeholders within and outside the continent. Else there will not be an end in sight to the ghastly find of shallow graves of suffocated and dehydrated migrants in the Sahara. Nor would the Mediterranean cease to open its mouth to human feeds washed from the banks of failed societies.