The outcome of the ANCs long-awaited KwaZulu-Natal conference was a win for the Thuma Mina crowd. (Delwyn Verasamy/M&G)
The recent xenophobic attacks in South Africa are the outcome of a complex range of social and political factors facing our region.
And while the complexities may be analysed at length, an effective response demands a swift and unambiguous response: a clamp down on perpetrators without implying some level of justification for the attacks (criminality, illegality of victims, and the like).
More than the immediate required response, the recurrence of these attacks and the prevailing xenophobia in SA requires a long-term vision that takes account of the complexities of factors that gave rise to the attacks in the first place.
Growing linkages
Ideologically, ActionAid conceives of a world (across hemispheres and borders) as one with a shared development destiny.
This means that, increasingly, as we grow in global interconnectedness, the developmental solutions to the major challenges defining our era require more powerful linkages between local and global solutions.
The most recent Ebola crisis was an all-too powerful illustration of the need for such an approach.
For this vision to be realised, we need a rooted pan-African vision that goes beyond the political platform tributes by our leaders. We need to see tangible evidence of this in the policies and the actions of African countries.
And more significantly, we need to actively invest in nurturing the ideology of Ubuntu and pan-Africanism among ordinary Africans. We know that in South Africa, for example, there is little if any investment in cultivating this knowledge and solidarity through formal or public education programmes.
The starting point of the conversation has to be an acknowledgement of the superficiality of the existing African borders. As Africans, we did not draw these borders and in many instances they impede a holistic development approach. Integrated regionalism can be the only solution in this regard.
Free movement of people, ideas, goods, based on a shared developmental and political vision for our region, by extending the vision of the great late President Samora Michel that for the nation to live, the tribe must die. In many ways, our era calls for demands that narrow competing national identities to be jettisoned in favour of a shared African vision and destiny.
Fatima Shabodien is country director of ActionAid South Africa