Zama zamas and foreigners are scapegoats on the West Rand
They have been made fall guys for all the ills in South African society but ultimately the politicians will have to take responsibility for their failings
The one-year mark that bookends the 2021 unrest does not find us engulfed in flames. We are, however, in a period of a slow but steady burn. While July 2021 erupted in rage that took many by surprise, August 2022 might be described as the month where the kindling really caught fire.
The end of this winter sees the normalisation of unrest as a permanent condition on the fringes of our big cities. Although our small towns have been the site of regular unrest that has largely gone unnoticed for the better part of a decade, the major cities have mostly remained under firm political and municipal control. Now, the slow decline of our cities has caught up to the despair and disrepair of our smaller towns.
Tembisa 2022 is not Pietermaritzburg or Phoenix in 2021 but we see the parallels in the rage and destruction at these sites. While businesses largely bore the brunt of the fires in 2021, this time it is municipal infrastructure that is on fire. Hit hard by the economic downturn and unheard by the city of Ekurhuleni, the residents of Tembisa first blockaded the R21 that joins the capital, Pretoria, and OR Tambo airport, the continent’s largest airport.
After setting a truck on fire, the flames quickly spread to the buildings housing the municipality, which has let down residents. These structures represent municipal failings, they serve as points of enforcing rate collection, and they are oppressive symbols in a time of desperation and desolation.
The township’s residents ask why they should be paying escalating fees for disrepair and neglect when unemployment is higher than it’s ever been.
Meanwhile, the new Democratic Alliance-run (DA) municipality, which would prefer to unsee the black townships under its jurisdiction, is politically inept and unable to meet the demands of the moment. Besides being unable to read the room, the DA is not interested in it.
The DA cannot work with informality in Cape Town, Johannesburg or Ekurhuleni. And the restless flames of our winter of discontent are rising and razing the little common infrastructure the East Rand has.
On the other side of the province, the West Rand is seething too. Here, residents are out on the streets in search of the zama zama artisanal miners who have been burrowing under their streets and homes looking for the elusive gold left by our erstwhile randlords. The people of
Kagiso and the neighbouring suburbs and townships have been living with the terror allegedly wrought by this subterranean community of zama zamas for a while.
Thousands of unemployed and unemployable people from the country and the region descend into the earth in search of leftover gold. Outside of the law, they operate as a force with their own rules, networks, equipment and logistics. The earth shakes and loosens. Cracks form on walls of homes above the illegal mining activity. Sinkholes form and suck the ground downwards. Cables are cut. Electricity stalls, the lights blink and water stammers through the taps. Streams get polluted and dust plumes hang low over the West Rand dawn.
Above ground, people watch the destruction. They are afraid of the unknown men who prowl under the earth. They see them skulk about at dusk. They hear the machinery drilling holes. They see cracks form everywhere. They fear for their children. They wonder if the increase in theft is because of wandering zama zamas.
In a country with pandemic proportions of rape and violence, the people of the West Rand fear the zama zamas will emerge from underground and rape them in their homes.
And then, one morning, we awake to the news of the gang rape of eight women who were part of a music video shoot in a disused mine in Krugersdorp on the West Rand. People’s fears are realised.
At a loss, our hapless police service finds the perfect scapegoat in the nameless community of artisanal
miners who scavenge mineral deposits in the wastelands of this part of the province.
In this restless Dudula season, when the nameless foreigner has come to represent all that is wrong in our societies, the mass rape is the last straw.
The hopeless police have the perfect scapegoat. Police Minister Bheki Cele, who sees his job as that of spokesperson and television star, wags his finger at the foreigners. Pule Mabe, the ANC spokesperson, awakens from his stupor and he too points at the foreigners. Herman Mashaba says, “I told you so!”
The people heave, enter the zama zama tunnels and return with hundreds of men. They pummel them. They release years of pent-up fear, anger and hopelessness. A zama zama is murdered. But beneath this name is a human being.
Hundreds of artisanal miners are arrested. These men could be the rapists. But we do not know. We cannot know because we were raping in our homes and neighbourhoods long before the advent of the foreigner and artisanal miner. The nameless foreigner, whose fingerprints are not registered on any database, is the perfect bogeyman.
Searching for imagined rapists feels more legitimate and worthwhile than rounding up informal business people from Somalia and Malawi. Here is a legitimate fight where we can eventually smoke out the zama zama who is also a foreigner and rapist. For now, we do not entertain the possibility that the rapists will be in our midst forever. Lesotho is not the rape capital. South Africa is.
Home Affairs Minister Aaron Motsoaledi is emboldened to increase his xenophobic rhetoric. He secures his place in the next cabinet but we do not know what he actually does with the power and resources that he has to do his job.
Failure after failure. We do not hold elected officials to account. Instead, we turn to the foreigner. We totter on the brink of the explosion of yet another mass xenophobic outbreak. We see fear and knowing in the eyes of our foreign colleagues and neighbours.
Kagiso on the West Rand remains a no-go zone. Stones line the potholed streets. Children cannot get to school. The angry residents who once cowered in their homes buzz with rage. The last zama zama might eventually be smoked out of his burrow but the social ills, and downward socioeconomic spiral, will not be as easily got rid of.
We morbidly watch our television screens fearing the meaning of the violence this time. We worry about yet another generation of children who see violence up close. We wonder what it means to see violence as a ready solution.
This is the South African way. Violence pulses ever closer. Explosion, death and fire. The soundtrack to our lives.
After the fires burn out, our social problems will remain intractably in place. The residents of Tembisa and Kagiso will have to reckon with the effects of the blaze. Like Pietermaritzburg and Phoenix, they will have to face the embers and spiralling unemployment.
After externalising the causes, we will have to face the rapists in our own homes.
After the happy diversion that the foreigner offers, the politicians must reckon with their failings. The crumbling infrastructure, power blackouts, drying taps and failing healthcare system will need to be faced head-on.
What will the politicians use to divert attention from their failings next time? And what will the middle classes who live lives of excess in the midst of hunger do when the rage engulfs suburbia?
We were raping in our homes and neighbourhoods long before the advent of the foreigner and artisanal miner
Hugo ka Canham is an associate professor of psychology at a Johannesburg university. He writes in his personal capacity.
The views expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the