Barthélemy Kouame runs one of the biggest online news services in Abidjan
South Africans took advantage of the crisis in Côte d’Ivoire to set up shop when Thabo Mbeki came to help broker a peace deal. Business people there have been looking at our country as a potential market since 1994, but the crisis is what really opened the door.
Our crisis involved the bad treatment of foreigners as we blamed a neighbouring state, Burkina Faso, for our problems …
Mbeki also tried to mediate a peace deal in Zimbabwe — What I don’t understand is how he can claim to be trying to bring peace to Africa through his mediation efforts in areas of ethnic tension when he isn’t able to do the same thing at home.
Mike Daka owns a commercial radio station in the north-eastern Zambian town of Chipata, after being chief editor at the Zambian News Agency.
I’m really saddened on a personal level. I grew up during the liberation struggle, I knew the ANC leaders in Lusaka and I assigned many reporters to cover stories in Liberation Centre. Mbeki was one of us, he was in charge of information, so we related to him —
Zambia’s economic growth was curtailed during apartheid — our sea links through South Africa were jeopardised, there were attacks on our infrastructure by the South African Defence Force; we lost a lot!
These days I would think twice about visiting South Africa and I’ve been worried for some time now about attacks when leaving OR Tambo Airport for the journey into Johannesburg —
South Africa already has a leadership role in Africa which could be forfeited if a solution to the current crisis isn’t found. How can you provide leadership if you attack the people that you want to lead?
Isaac Yeboah is the online editor of Joy FM, a radio station in Ghana’s capital, Accra
I always thought of South Africa as what Africa should be, but today events in that country are shameful. South Africa is slipping into a void without leadership.
Sadly, xenophobic attacks are not confined only to South Africa. Only a few weeks ago, the Ghanaian government expelled Liberians who had been living here as refugees for more than 17 years.
And we can’t forget the thousands of Ghanaians expelled by Nigeria back in 1983. Africa must do better.
I draw inspiration from [Ghana’s first prime minister] Kwame Nkrumah’s words: ‘Given the opportunity, the black man can prove to the whole world that he’s capable of managing his own affairs.â€
Koffi Ametepe is a journalist on a satirical weekly in Burkina Faso’s capital, Ouagadougou
I felt shame as an African as the first stories of the violence in South Africa reached me.
As a Burkinabe, if I see black-on-black violence perpetrated by South Africans on their close neighbours, how, I wonder, will they treat me, an African from far away?
For me South Africa has always been a symbol of hope, a model. I realise now, however, this hope has been part of a dream and I’ve now been awakened from my sleep.
I think South Africa has reached some sort of dead end and it has to rethink its way forward, but that way forward must be stronger than words. The way forward must include promises from leadership to the population, promises that leadership will never let this happen again. Economic success in South Africa is not the same as successful integration.