This is xenophobia, plain and simple

ONE of the biggest challenges this country faces is weak leaders who, when called upon to provide leadership, often speak with forked tongues. With Pretoria on tenterhooks this past week, our political leaders, as has become the norm, went to ground. When they finally emerged, they not only contradicted each other, but some used this painful ordeal to score cheap political points.

All we needed was for our leaders to speak with one voice. With the country’s capital at a standstill, we watched one sphere of government condemning the violence and calling it exactly what it is — while another branch denied the attacks were motivated by xenophobia, insisting that South Africans were not xenophobic.

The less said about Tshwane mayor Solly Msimanga, who wanted to turn this into a political football, the better. Msimanga claimed that those who planned last year’s protests against Thoko Didiza’s mayoral candidacy in the city were also behind this violence. Really?

All this happened as the police tried to avert an ugly war between South Africans and African immigrants, who were armed with machetes, bricks and sticks.

Gauteng premier David Makhura, during the debate in the legislature, sought to provide leadership by issuing a warning to those behind the attacks that there was no place in the country for individuals who violate the right to life.

He called for calm, unity, for a change of attitudes towards fellow Africans and for South Africans to stand up and say: “Not in our name.”

He said: “You are your brother’s keeper. The perpetrators of xenophobic attacks do not belong in our society. They must be prosecuted. We must defeat xenophobia like apartheid.”

Exactly what the country needed to hear. That was until President Jacob Zuma entered the fray. He contradicted Makhura, arguing that the outbreak of violence in Pretoria was not xenophobic. He said those people were just fed up with crime.

No, Mr President, you are wrong. When the marchers — who you want us to believe are just proud South Africans who are sick of crime in their neighbourhoods — call for foreigners to go home; when they loot their shops; when they claim all immigrants are criminals; when they accuse them of stealing our jobs; and when they assert they are taking our women, they are being xenophobic.

If they were really concerned about crime, they would have marched against all criminals: South African and African.