Pan-African institution builder and geopolitical risk analyst Tim Akano has written an open letter to South African President Cyril Ramaphosa, urging him to take decisive action against xenophobic attacks and protect African migrants living in the country.
In the letter, Akano argues that South Africa’s identity is inseparable from the African continent, describing violence against fellow Africans as a betrayal of the country’s history and Pan-African ideals. He also outlines a seven-point proposal aimed at addressing unemployment, land ownership, youth empowerment and economic transformation in South Africa.
Below is the full text of his open letter:
The Day South Africa Deleted Africa from its Name-And Became Just “South”: SA-A=S=B
An open Letter President Cyril Ramaphosa
Tim Akano
Your Excellency, President Cyril Ramaphosa,
My Mathematical truth above says it all: South Africa (SA)-Africa (A) = South (S) and = Basement (B) SA-A=S=B
I write to you with a burning urgency that will not wait for diplomatic courtesy, because Africa itself cannot wait. The June 30 deadline — conjured by mob arithmetic and street vigilantism — is now 48 hours from detonation. Thousands of Nigerians, Congolese, Zimbabweans, Malawians, Mozambicans and Ghanaians are huddled in makeshift camps, boarding evacuation flights, and fleeing a country whose very name declares them family.
I have written on this wound before. My earlier essay on xenophobia reached your distinguished predecessor, President Thabo Mbeki, who responded publicly with the clarity of a statesman — correctly situating South Africa’s unemployment crisis where it rightly belongs: in the unresolved (but resolvable) structural ruins of apartheid infrastructure which was made of a steel-fibre- reinforced concrete, and not in the tired bodies of African migrants who came seeking dignity, not charity.
That President Mbeki came.down from the fence and spoke as an African Statesman is commendable. That we are here again, worse than before, is a tragedy that must end with your voice, Your Excellency — and it must end now. This is not the time.to sit on the.fence, your Excellency.
But I do not come to you today merely with a political argument. I come with a mathematical truth so simple, so devastating, that I am astonished it has not been shouted from every pulpit and parliament in this continent.
Remove Africa from South Africa, and what remains?
South.
Just South. A compass direction. A void. A word that in the grammar of human failure points downward — to the bottom, to the basement, to the abyss. South Africa is the only nation on earth that carries the name of the entire continent as its surname. That is not an accident of cartography. That is a covenant. When the architects of your nationhood chose that name, they were making a declaration to history: this nation belongs to Africa, and Africa belongs to this nation. To now violently expel Africans from South Africa is to commit an act of self-erasure so profound it borders on civilisational suicide. You cannot hold Africa in your name while hunting Africans in your streets.
Your Excellency, consider what Africa has given South Africa that no IMF spreadsheet can fully capture. It was African solidarity that kept the ANC alive during the darkest decades of apartheid. It was African soil that sheltered your freedom fighters when their own soil was poisoned by Pretoria’s oppression. It was African bodies that formed the human shield between apartheid’s guns and the dream of a free South Africa. Oliver Tambo did not find sanctuary in London alone. He was carried by Africa. Nelson Mandela’s cause was championed not only in the West — it was nurtured and amplified across this continent’s capitals, churches, and conscience. To forget this is not merely ingratitude. It is amnesia of a criminal kind.
I just.watched.the. ideos.of.thousands of.Africans who are now stranded in South Africa and the armed vigilante groups are threatening fire and brimestone as from June 30, just 48 hours away. More than 3,000 Malawians, including hundreds of children, are sheltering in open fields in Durban while thousands of Nigerians are stranded at the embassy bereftof food and hope. Ghana, Mozambique rush aircraft to evacuate their terrified citizens.
President Ramaphosa, you have the power today — not tomorrow, not after June 30, but today — to issue a presidential directive that declares unambiguously: Africans are safe in South Africa. Period. Not documented Africans only. Not Africans with papers only. Africans. Because the Africa in your name does not carry an asterisk.
The root causes of South Africa’s pain — inequality, poor governance, the unfinished business of post-apartheid economic transformation — are real. (The Conversation) But directing that pain at migrants who have nothing, who themselves were dispossessed by the same global economic forces, is not justice. It is scapegoating. It is the weaponisation of poverty against poverty. (The Conversation) A carpenter from Malawi did not cause South Africa’s 60% youth unemployment. A Congolese trader did not design apartheid’s land dispossession. A Nigerian teacher did not choose for minerals to flow out of Africa while prosperity flows in the opposite direction. These are victims blaming victims while the architects of the original crime watch in comfort.
Your Excellency, history is writing its ledger in real time. It will record what you said — and what you did not say — in these 48 hours. It will note whether the president of South Africa stood up for the Africa in his country’s name, or looked away while that name was hollowed out by hatred.
South Africa minus Africa is just South. And South, Mr. President, means only one thing: basement.
Choose Africa. Choose your full name. Choose your future.
The continent is watching. History is waiting. And 48 hours is all you have.
WAY FORWARD FOR SOUTH AFRICA SUSTAINABLE TRANSFORMATION
- The Mandatory Equity: own together or own zero. Legislate that any white commercial farm above 500 hectares must, within 5 years bring a black co-ownership structure with minimum of 40% equity through a state-backed Land Equity Bank that provides capital for black partners to buy land at a subsidized rate. Transferring land without transferring capital, know-how and network is meaningless. My model, SA 4 ALL FARMING transf ownership, capital, skill and dignity without any land abandoned.
- National Skills For Land (NS4L): unemployed black youths earn land title through documented agricultural or construction labor on state acquired land. Two years of certified service on a communal agric-enterprise earns a transferable title deed.
- SILICON SAVANNAH: Within 9 months of targeted,.massive knowledge transfer in the areas.of 4.0 skills , we can create one million quality ICT jobs,.especially in Artificial intelligence.
- The Apartheid Reparations Wealth Fund: History must pay its debt Legislate a corporate Historical shared wealth prosperity. For all the companies that benefited from apartheid before 1994, they should pay 2.5% levy on gross turnover into a new bank tagged BLACK WEALTH TRANSFER BANK (BWTB) annually for only 20 years.
- UBUNTU BLOCKCHAIN URBAN LAND COMPACT: more than 60% of South Africa’s population hold land that is not legally documented, therfore, not commercially useful as economic collateral. Put all the land on Blockchain technology and Unlock billions of dollars for black South Africans.
- Leverage AfCFTA by opening up the south Africa market, especially after the youth empowerment. Every black youth with capacity to employ 5 south African youths will have free access to 54 African countries to market their businesses. That is like having access to an ocean as against South Africa’s pond of today.
- Peculiar problems require peculiar, creative solutions. Beheading is not an antidote to headaches. Your Excellency, stop the mobs from beheading our pride, our South Africa.
Tim Akano is a Pan-African institution builder, public intellectual, Geopolitical Risks analyst and Founder/CEO of New Horizons Africa Group. Founder, Almajiri-to-tech- Foundation, writes from Lagos, Nigeria.
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