ZUMA IN DENIAL OVER ANTI-FOREIGNER MARCH
Ignoring worrying sentiment against migrants is dangerous
NEWLY appointed University of SA (Unisa) chancellor and former president Thabo Mbeki expressed concerns over last week’s antiforeigner march in Pretoria and the violence and looting that followed it.
Speaking at his inauguration on Monday, Mbeki said: “Those who organise and participate in these attacks, which must stop, must know there is absolutely nothing revolutionary, progressive, patriotic, acceptable or of service to the people in these criminal activities.
“Many of us know that our country faces many socio-economic challenges such as poverty and unemployment. Not even one of these problems can or will be solved by attacking fellow Africans who have joined us as migrants.”
The very first wave of xenophobic violence in 2008 happened under Mbeki’s watch. His response now is indicative of a statesman who is wiser for learning from past experience.
President Jacob Zuma, speaking on the sidelines of the launch of Operation Phakisa in Roodeplat, outside Pretoria, just as the anti-foreigner march was underway, used the opportunity to send a stern warning to foreign nationals.
“One of the things we do in South Africa, we are not operating like other countries. In other countries refugees are put in camps, but because we respect the human rights we don’t. But if they [foreigners/refugees] operate the way they do, they may be forcing us to discriminate [against] them and yet we thought we could handle the situation.”
His call for locals not to be xenophobic was diminished by this denunciation of foreign nationals, which could be interpreted as a condonation of the actions and attitudes of the marchers – whether the president intended it or not.
In the president’s own words, the march was “anti-crime in the main, it is not xenophobic and I have been told that the people leading the march are saying so. It is not an anti-foreigner march. It is not antiNigerians as it has been portrayed,” he said.
President Zuma may be in denial about the purpose of the march and the intentions of those who led it, but the marchers were not shy to exhibit their agenda.
Perhaps Zuma and his advisors were just not paying attention.
The protesters handed over a memorandum of demands to the Home Affairs Department that was critical of foreign nationals and called on government not to allow African immigrants to operate businesses. Protesters continued to express sentiments that immigrants were synonymous with crime, including drug-dealing and prostitution.
In a country where xenophobic attitudes abound, it is irresponsible for the head of state and government to be heard and seen to give credence to those sentiments by employing sophistry and semantics. Politicians are playing politics with people’s lives, people who are vulnerable to violence and attacks.
For immigrants, this is not a matter of semantics. It is a matter of life and death and of losing the property that they have risked everything for and staked their lives on when they made the hard choice of leaving their own countries to come to South Africa.
“Attacking fellow Africans will not solve any problem
The Tshwane Metro Police Department (TMPD) had initially rejected the application for the protest over security concerns in the light of attacks against foreigners which preceded the march. This was good judgment.
But when the Mamelodi Concerned Residents vowed to go ahead with the demonstrations with or without authorisation, the TMPD relented. According to their logic, they would rather concede, grant permission and have some control over the situation rather than to be caught off guard.
Even so, it is of little comfort to know that our law-enforcement agencies can so easily be cajoled into complicity with ill-advised community members in perpetuating dangerous stereotypes about
“Deal with those abusing our migration system
an already vulnerable section of the population.
If, as the president believes, these are people concerned about the scourge of crime, why do they themselves perpetrate crime against the very foreigners they have labelled criminals? Where is the place for looting, vandalism and violence among law-abiding, peace-loving residents who are frustrated with the ills besetting their communities?
Frederick Douglas, born a slave in the 1800s but went on to find and edit The North Star newspaper, a voice for those yet to gain their freedom and equality, wrote: “Where justice is denied, where poverty is enforced, where ignorance prevails, and where any one class is made to feel that society is an organised conspiracy to oppress, rob and degrade them, neither persons nor property will be safe.”
This is how blacks were subjected to under apartheid, an assault on their dignity and made to feel less than other classes and races. How is it now that it is black South Africans that are subjecting other Africans to the injustice of attacks, looting and ignorant stereotyping that is an assault on their dignity?
Instead of lambasting foreigners, Zuma and his government should work more urgently and more visibly to empower citizens and to work together with communities to improve the impeding conditions under which they live.
Government should deal swiftly with those who abuse our immigration system, within the bounds of the law, and protect all immigrants who are indispensable to the prosperity of our nation.