“When the white man came we had the land and they had the bible, then they taught us to pray with our eyes closed, when we opened our eyes they had the land and we had the bible.” — Jomo Kenyatta.
When South African model and beauty queen, Chidimma Adetshina, sashayed onto the Miss South Africa pageant catwalk in 2024, her confidence and star power was noticed—and so was her allegedly “Makwerekwere” name.
Mzansi’s name-police promptly assembled, screaming “Makwerekwere!” despite her being born in South Africa. The controversy exposed South Africa’s xenophobia, which was further fueled by the fact her mother was Mozambican and father Nigerian. Then came the plot twist: her mother was accused of stealing a South African woman’s identity.
Suddenly, beauty queens needed ‘authentic’ surnames.
In Mzansi, makwerekwere is the word reserved for that supposedly “unintelligible chatter” that escapes the mouths of African migrants when they have the audacity to speak their own languages. It is a word that usually wakes up when life gets difficult, unemployment numbers start behaving like a national emergency, and the price of everything begins climbing faster than they can shout, makwerekwere.
Suddenly, the foreigner becomes the national economic theory.
Never mind the economy was already sick long before the latest Zimbabwean, Mozambican, Nigerian or Congolese arrived with a suitcase, a cellphone and the dangerous ambition of finding work.
Unemployment? Makwerekwere. Crime? Makwerekwere. Drugs? Makwerekwere. Hospitals overcrowding? Makwerekwere.
Your neighbour’s son has been looking for a job for five years? Obviously, some Zimbabwean, Malawian, Mozambican or Nigerian stole it while you were sleeping. How can this foreign African be making a living while I am broke?
This is how poor people are persuaded to fight other poor people while the people who own the economy sit somewhere drinking aged single-malt and blended scotch whiskies wondering why Africans are so violent.
Armed groups are now attacking informal businesses owned by African migrants, breaking doors, issuing threats, looting shops and displacing families. The irony is that when the foreigners disappear, some industries discover that the people they called makwerekwere were actually doing the jobs nobody else wanted to do.
The looter then discovers that the cheap shop has disappeared. The hovel he lives in is the same hovel he’ll return to everyday. Everyone is poorer.
In contrast, rich countries do not organize riots against Kenyan athletes who acquire their citizenship. Bahrain, Qatar, Turkey, Kazakhstan, Denmark, Israel and others have embraced Kenyan-born athletes who compete under their flags. When the Kenyan-born runner wins, the anthem plays, the medals shine and everybody is suddenly proud of this model citizen.
No one storms the athlete’s house shouting, “Go back to Kenya! You are stealing our 10,000 metres!” Because apparently a Kenyan is an immigrant when he sells tomatoes but an international asset when he wins gold.
Burundians have arrived in Kenya in significant numbers looking for economic opportunities. They hawk coffee, mandazi, groundnuts, clothes and assorted small goods. They work as salon assistants, farmhands, watchmen and construction workers.
Many work hard, accept low wages and survive in precisely the informal economy where unemployment is already painful. Problem is, Burundi is the poorest country in Africa.
Recently, the president to whom 76 percent of Kenyans say is running down the economy, according to a poll, said all foreign small traders should leave the country.
Anxious Burundians rushed to their embassy to regularize their papers. The government subsequently announced a 90-day grace period. But the horse had already bolted. Some migrants had reportedly faced threats on their lives from locals and have decided they are better off returning to their motherland. Usually, it’s the poor people who are behind the threats as they look for an opportunity to loot their businesses.
Then comes the funny part.
Some Nairobi traders have been complaining that they miss the Burundians who walked around hawking coffee and mandazi for their 10 O’clock and afternoon snack. So the foreigner who was supposedly destroying Kenya’s economy was also the person bringing breakfast.
While Kenyans are encouraged to stare angrily at Burundians, Congolese, Ugandans, Nigerians, and Somalis, the Chinese are operating retail businesses that Kenyans could also run but attract comparatively less popular fury. Chinese involvement in artisanal mining of gold has similarly raised questions in places such as West Pokot and Kakamega counties.
But apparently the African migrant is easier to blame.
If Kenyans want to conduct a serious investigation into the makwerekwere menace, perhaps we should begin with the British variety.
Kenyans fight one another over a piece of land the size of a handkerchief while large tracts in thousands of acres remain under powerful colonial landowners and organisations with historical links to colonial landholding.
The colonial project did not arrive carrying only Bibles and savagery, it also arrived with imperialistic motives.
An aristocratic British colonialist, one of the biggest land owners in Kenya, Lord Delamere said; “I am going to prove to you all, that this is a white man’s land (Kenya). But, I humbly said it is a black man’s country. How are you going to superimpose the white over the black? The black man will benefit and cooperate.” From Kenya Diary.
The descendants of that history still live sequestered behind tens of thousands of acres of land masquerading as conservation outfits. In Kenya white makwerekweres are hunters while the natives are poachers. Time and again they confiscate livestock from herders when they wander into their fiefdoms which have no fence and shoot at the herders.
And this is where South Africa’s problem becomes Kenya’s problem.
South Africa may chase migrants while a profoundly unequal distribution of land and wealth remains. The white people own the land while the natives are squatters.
In fact, there are claims of a rebirth of aprtheid by SA MP, Ahmed Munzoor Shaik Emam, whosays the Western Cape is seeking independence from South Africa to become a Jewish state.
Soon South Africans will need a visa to visit Cape Town but the so-called protesters will never go after whities but would rather enthusiastically clobber their black brothers and sisters.
In Kenya, there are plans to create a Jewish settlement in Solai, Nakuru county. This is causing jitters due to the fact events might turn out like in Gaza and we find ourselves as makwerekweres seeking refuge in Somalia and Uganda.
To get to the point. South Africa is not a country but a corporation whose shares are sold in the New York stock exchange. Which means the occupants of Mzansi are feudal slaves, squatters, and no different from other Makwerekweres.
Kenya is also a colony; managed by the Imperial British East Africa company who usually select the demagogue who will become president from the confines of Chatham House. This means, we are makwerekweres who have no clue they are makwerekweres in their own country.
The kakistocracy that runs Kenya tried to bait us into the xenophobia madness of South Africa while they avoid the uncomfortable question of who owns the land, the corporations, who controls capital and why are ordinary Kenans economically impoverished decades after ‘independence.’
The same Kenyans who are fighting over a job paying KSh20,000 can be persuaded that the foreigner earning KSh10,000 is their enemy.Capitalism watches this quarrel from the balcony, eating popcorn.
Perhaps the real joke is that the makwerekwere is not necessarily the person standing outside your shop. The real makwerekwere may be the economic system that has convinced Africans that the African next door is the reason he is poor and not a rigged economic system which is a colonial arrangement.
And the arrangement is working very well.
So why are African natives continent-wide marginalised? A secret! Human beings are not classified as natural beings, they are fictitious entities, just like corporations in true legalese.
Ballantine’s Law Dictionary (1948) invokes, “Human Being; See MONSTER.” Ballantine’s Law Dictionary (1930): MONSTER; A human being by birth, but in some part resembling a lower animal. A monster hath no inheritable blood, and cannot be heir to any land.”
If humans are legally classified as monsters, who actually owns the land? Property taxes become part of the mystery. A deed may appear to grant ownership, yet the fine print allegedly reduces the human to an occupant or lessee. Which means someone else, not a monster, owns that land and you are merely leasing it.
“The homo neanderthalensis (neanderthals) who lived in Eurasia and which our history tells us went extinct 40,000 years ago as a species is still alive and in powerful global positions.
Since the advent of genetic testing neanderthals have been proven to exist and many of them are out here. “They are heavily populated in crypto-jew communities.”
People of ethnic European descent have between 2 to 3% neanderthal genes while East Asians carry 2.3 to 2.6% of the genes. Africans have none.
“The ultra-rare and ultra-specific Haplogroup Neanderthalensis has been carried down through eons of time by mainly Jews. Haplogroup J does not show up in all Jews as the ordinary Jews only carry trace level of male haplogroup J. However, Haplogroup J is found within the priestly class that issues all the laws and rules over Jews, the Levant and the Kohanim (Cohens), modern-day Sarmatians, with as much as 96% Neanderthal genes. “
In the Jewish Talmud: Baba Mezia 114b; it says, “only Jews are Human. The Goyim are animals.”
“Lord Enki, who is also identified as the biblical Nimrod, acquired the title to “all soil of earth above water” through the Eye of Isis, or Camel’s Eye, Treaty of 408 A.D.” The treaty explains global land taxation, international trade, and the hidden ownership of the world.
Jacob Rothschild did say, Nimrod, the ruler of ancient Babylon was his “direct ancestor.” In fact South Africa is the property of the Rothschild and Oppenheimer families.
South Africa had a Freedom Charter — that Nelson Mandela fought for — that promised the country’s mines, banks, land, and major industries would be owned by the people but the fake Mandela who came out of prison — a western stooge — overruled decades of liberation promises, and the country is now run like a typical western-controlled African kakistocracy.
Until Africans take full control of their own political and economic destiny, we will all remain permanent makwerekweres in our countries.
After the South African fallout, Chidimma Adetshina was welcomed in Nigeria, where she entered Miss Universe Nigeria despite living outside the country for 20 years—and promptly won. At the 73rd Miss Universe, she became first runner-up, earning the Miss Universe Africa and Oceania title, Nigeria’s highest global pageant finish.
Then came the plot twist again. Mia Le Roux, Miss Universe South Africa, withdrew from the Mexico final citing “unexpected health reasons.” The woman Mzansi had called makwerekwere was now Miss Africa, representing not only Nigeria, but 53 African countries, including South Africa.
Geography it seems has a sense of humor.
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