Absent friends and enemies
Like any sensible soul, I try not to have arguments on social media (a pointless exercise because the other person will never admit how wrong they are), but I broke this rule recently. As the “winter uprising” was sputtering out, leaving smouldering embers and wielders of brooms in its wake, a public post from a South African living abroad incensed me so much that I couldn’t help responding.
This person called on the United Nations, CNN, the BBC and Trevor Noah to step in and assist “incompetent” SA to end the “total anarchy” because “international help is needed”. There were also multiple exclamation marks and hashtags invoking prayer.
My response was, I thought, fairly reasoned. I didn’t deny the insurrection or diminish the extent of the devastation caused by smashers and grabbers. Mostly I pointed out that the UN generally doesn’t send warships off to countries not involved in actual wars.
I might also have used the words “ignorant” and “hysterical”, which I think upset the former Mzansi resident. She roared back about having the right to an opinion, as well as some other stuff about how sad it was for people like her to be forced to live abroad.
Everyone is of course allowed to hold an opinion. Perhaps what riled me was not so much the lack of knowledge about international interventions as the anti-SA attitude that is not uncommon among expats.
Not all South Africans living in other countries hate their homeland. I’m not saying this person does either, but between the exclamation marks I sensed an undertone of schadenfreude. When I shared the exchange with sympathetic friends (because everyone likes to be told that they were right), one said: “People who have left SA are always the worst. I always think there’s a part of them that wants the whole country to implode so they can pat themselves on the back.”
Maybe we were both reading too much into a message that came only from a desire for SA’s wellbeing, but I don’t think so.
Most expats are not denouncers of everything to do with SA, but we have all met one of the Other Kind, those who display an almost indecorous delight at every failing and disaster back home, because these things mean they never have to question their choices and can look pityingly from afar at the burning ruins enveloping those witless enough to not have “got out”.
As an aside, these are frequently the same people who without any irony laud their newly adopted land’s anti-immigration policies, because they certainly wouldn’t want to be surrounded by boatloads of penniless refugees after escaping the spectre of inequality in the “Third World”.
Incidentally, for centuries the word “expatriate” meant “one who has been banished from their native country”. Only in the early 20th century was it extended to mean “one who chooses to live abroad” and in the 1960s it was shortened to the cosy “expat”.
It might sound like I have a beef with expats. I really don’t, whether their absconding from our shores was forced or voluntary. There is nothing wrong with choosing to live elsewhere if one has the means and opportunity to do so. Most South Africans don’t, but this doesn’t mean we are angry with or jealous of those who do.
I just think there might be less red-faced ranting on social media and elsewhere if SA-loathing expats kept their self-justifying opinions to themselves, or at least devoted some time to self-examination before airing their superior smugness.
What I really have a beef with is the same kind of pompous puffery spouted by those who have not physically moved elsewhere; those whose bodies remain in SA while their loyalties (because patriotism is such a loaded word) have already flown off and attached themselves to the imagined ideals of some elsewhere utopia.
Of course there is a lot wrong with SA. Of course it needs help. It needs help from us, its citizens, whether we live here or not, because Trevor Noah and António Guterres are not about to come charging to our rescue at the head of a brigade of holy warriors.