Why xenophobic violence might happen again in the future
The stories of both the killed and their killers must be heard, for a crude narrative won’t yield effective strategies to combat this problem, writes Kopano Ratele
THE LITTLE nice boy in me dislikes being the bearer of bad news. But from listening, watching and reading government plans, utterances from government spokespeople, apologies from business, and media reports, I feel pressed to the raise the prospect that xenophobic violence might burst forth again in the future. The plans and actions to prevent xenophobic violence once and for all are not very promising.
There are at least three reasons for my pessimism. The first one is that there is as yet little admission that xenophobic violence is symptomatic of a deeper embedded violence in our society and psyches.
Until we fully recognise that xenophobia-related violence is first and last about violence, we will remain trapped in the hand-wringing, sense of outrage and reactive mode.
President Jacob Zuma made a vital admission over a week ago when he said the ANC should shoulder responsibility for the mistake of doing nothing about changing the fact that people’s psyches were soaked with the violence of apartheid structures.
It was a delusion to believe that overcoming apartheid would entail overcoming the memories of apartheid humiliation. It is a fiction that keeps being re-counted.
Constitutional freedom does not automatically translate into social-psychological liberation. And then there is that matter of economic liberation.
No amount of “#NoToXenophobia” hashtag campaigns and “We Are One” television ads will have a long-term impact on xenophobic attitudes and related violence unless we face the fact that were are actually not all one big cohesive happy South African family – forget about being one big happy African family.
Black South Africans carry deep socialpsychological wounds and experience ongoing economic want due to historical migrancy, super-exploited labour practices, fractured poor families, weak community bonds and bleak future prospects. That is bound to make anyone distressed.
The second reason government plans and actions to eradicate xenophobic violence from our midst are likely to fail is that we don’t have enough scientific research on the concept of xenophobia itself and as it relates to violence.
Social science researchers know that xenophobia, similar to many other social scientific theoretical concepts, is an abstraction. Deploying the concept in an over-simplified manner as government, big business and many of us have done in the aftermath of the violence mostly directed at foreigners in the country, backed by little scientific evidence and theoretical rigour, is not going to help us understand the determinants and currents of the violence.
How, then, about bringing our best scholars of society, health and the mind to help us understand the causes, features and underlying forces of xenophobic violence?
As things stand, bar the fact of violence, it is incredible how very weak social scientific evidence we have about this terrible affair, and what simplistic stories are woven around the violence. Apologies, expressions of embarrassment, condemnation, and tantrums from our own and other African governments have their place, but there is a scarcity of solid social scientific and public health knowledge.
Certainly, violence, whether it affects foreigners or locals, deserves to be censured and prevented. That means any violence, whatever its causes, needs to be tackled. To do so for the long term, good data and deep insight are essential.
That would entail finding out the mag- nitude, distribution, and dynamics of xenophobia in our society. It points to the need to study whether xenophobia is exhibited mainly by women or men, black or white people, locals or foreigners, the poor and lower classes or the middle and upper classes, the young or the old, and whether it is concentrated in KwaZulu-Natal, Gaut- eng or other provinces.
It suggests generating better explanations of the relationship between xenophobia and variables such as unemployment, inequality, knife-carrying or smoking. It indicates efforts to understand the association between violence and hatred of foreigners. And it implies finding out under what conditions individuals who selfreport xenophobic attitudes will get aggressive. Since it is not everyone who is xenophobic who will attack foreigners, chances are that there are moderators or mediators between xenophobia and violence, which means there are other factors that need to be accounted for when trying to explain violence against foreigners.
I have said the violence was mostly directed at foreigners because media reports have mentioned that South Africans were part of those killed in the violence. And yet, although we are told that at least three locals have been killed in the incidents, a simplistic narrative of the violence has become dominant. This is the third reason we should not be too opti- mistic about the plans and actions to stop the xenophobic violence forever. The narrative of the violence is simply too crude.
I may have missed the reports but there seems to be relatively little said about the South Africans who have died from the violence. We need to know their stories too, just as we need to hear stories of those who have been committing the acts of violence.
One of the weekend papers has thankfully begun telling the stories of the young men (and the families of these men) who killed the Mozambican cigarette seller Emmanuel Sithole. Many of these stories reveal misery and bleak futures. And to learn of their miserable lives makes one wonder why we are startled when we witness the callousness with which they kill.
Hearing of the life stories of victims, not just narratives of death, is necessary for empathising with foreigners who live and get killed in South Africa.
But it is also in having the courage to tell and listen to the life stories of killers, of those who would kill because they can’t bear their lives, that we will be able to fully understand the nature of the xenophobic violence. It is when we generate less onedimensional pictures of the xenophobic violence that we will overcome.
A set of such life accounts that has not received adequate space in telling of xenophobic violence is that our society is in fact disproportionately unsafe for poor young South African black men and women. And so these accounts are required reading because they are bound to reveal the humanness of both the victims and the perpetrators of violence instead of turning some into only victims or statistics and others into monsters and criminals.
Facing up to the banality of violence in our country might assist us to see that the risk to violence of poor young South Africans is closely intertwined with the risk faced by poor black foreigners. Vice versa, the precarious conditions that characterise the lives of poor black foreigners in South Africa are better understood if they are linked to the precariousness of the lives of poor black locals.
Till the vulnerability of poor black foreigners is seen in the light of the economic and social-psychological vulnerability of poor black locals, there is little light in the tunnel. In all likelihood, the violence we have witnessed emerges not simply from xenophobic attitudes but from multiple failures, socioeconomic conditions, and social-psychological vulnerabilities that have thrown together poor locals and foreigners in oppressive life circumstances.
Therefore preventing xenophobic violence requires a comprehensive programme of study and action against homicidal, sexual, symbolic, structural and slow violence that affects our society.
Violence, whether it affects foreigners or locals,
deserves to be censured and prevented
Ratele is a professor at Unisa, a researcher at the Violence, Injury and Peace Research Unit (Vipru) at the Medical Research Council and chairman of Sonke Gender Justice. He writes in his personal capacity.