Xenophobia continues in the vein of apartheid
WHEN residents of townships dotted throughout the nine provinces of South Africa speak of foreigners, they generally mean fellow Africans from countries to the north – Zimbabwe, Mozambique, Malawi, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Somalia and Nigeria.
They don’t mean people from Europe, Australia or North America, who come to South Africa to buy farms, houses or other property.
Foreign Africans are the ones they come into contact with – and despise … and worse.
Many South Africans hate these amakwerekwere – a derogatory term for foreign Africans – enough sometimes to kill them and to loot and burn their businesses (usually shops they had painstakingly built up in the townships).
Over the years, the South African government has paid lip service to the notion of free movement of Africans across the continent – and of a welcoming hand to refugees fleeing wars and other forms of strife in their own countries.
In fact, some members of the ruling ANC have been as disparaging of those seeking homes and refuge in South Africa as many of the less informed and plain ignorant in the townships and other parts of the country.
With the police being either corrupt or less than enthusiastic to ensure that one of the dictates of the Freedom Charter is adhered to – “South Africa belongs to all who live in it, black and white” – foreign Africans have become fearful for their lives at the hands of xenophobic and criminal South Africans.
It is for good reason have become worried …
The month of May marked the anniversary – this year it is the 10th – of one of the most shameful events in South African history since the advent of democracy: a countrywide orgy of murder and assault of foreign Africans and the looting of their businesses and possessions.
The reasons given for these attacks were what the ignorant always resort to when trying to purge people they hate: they accused them of spreading disease, stealing jobs and sponging off basic government services such as electricity, running water and health care.
Sixty-two people, some of them members of minority South African tribal groups, died in the violence.
In the Gauteng township of Alexandra, migrants and refugees, mainly from Somalia and Ethiopia, were dragged through the streets and “necklaced”.
Tens of thousands of terrified people fled their homes and businesses, and were forced to seek refuge in churches, mosques and police stations. The South African government was happy to sit on its hands, rather than take decisive action. Indeed, for a long time it insisted that criminality, not xenophobia, was behind the killings and looting – then they sent in the army. that they
Not everyone sat back, watched and said nothing as murderous South Africans marched through townships in search of foreigners.
The outspoken Archbishop Desmond Tutu, noted for often shaming the government for its inaction over a number of issues, especially with regard to the helpless, apologised to victims of xenophobic violence.
“The diocese of Johannesburg called together people and said we need to repent, So this is a service of repentance in which we confess our sins of xenophobia,” Tutu said.
“We were welcomed as exiles, as freedom fighters in those African lands. Could we really have forgotten so soon?” he asked.
By contrast, then president Thabo Mbeki was slated by the international media and local social activists for his almost blasé attitude towards the blatant xenophobia of South Africans – even though he was regarded as a strong supporter of regional co-operation, especially among the countries on South Africa’s borders.
What irked his critics was the time he took to respond to the xenophobic attacks of 2008. It did not go unnoticed, too, that although he was regarded as overly lenient with regard to migration and border control, deportations reached a peak during his time at the helm of government.
Yet, despite this, as well as the ever-present risk of being killed or assaulted, tens of thousands of Africans from other parts of the continent have continued to clamour to come to South Africa – to seek refuge from murderous regimes in their own countries, or to look for work or business opportunities. Of the less qualified who find jobs, the majority end up as cheap labour on farms and mines.
In many ways, xenophobia reaffirms how badly apartheid has continued to damage South Africa and South Africans.
It is a sad irony that tens of thousands of undocumented foreigners are hunted down by the South African police – in very much the same way as black South Africans, without passes, were hunted down and arrested in urban areas by the apartheid police, and then “endorsed out” to a “homeland” they had no ties with.
“Undocumented”, “passes” and “endorsed out” – these are terms of apartheid. Who would have thought this language would still be used in the second decade of the second millennium – in an age of democracy in South Africa?
The xenophobic attacks of 2008 started in Johannesburg, before spreading to Durban and Cape Town, and smaller cities and towns.
Foreigners were randomly identified and casually attacked. In Johannesburg, the Central Methodist Church, where hundreds of undocumented Zimbabweans sought refuge, resembled a battlefield as local South Africans and the police tried to get at them.
The better-resourced police did. Armed with tear gas and batons, and dogs, they stormed a barricade of bricks set up by those seeking refuge, and arrested 500 people.
Church officials said afterwards that many of the refugees were robbed of their possessions and even people who had documents were arrested.
In Durban, the first attack was on a bar frequented by Nigerians, before spreading to flats rented by Rwandese and Congolese, and informal settlements housing Mozambicans, Zimbabweans and Malawians. Some of the attackers sang Jacob Zuma’s trademark song, Umshini Wami (“Bring me my machine gun”).
In Cape Town, Somali shopkeepers were singled out for attack.
The most sympathetic attitude towards the foreign Africans came from a group of South Africans who were widely seen and dismissed as an “underclass” – the Durban and Pietermaritzburg shack dwellers’ movement, Abahlali basemjondolo.
Despite being constantly attacked by the state, intent on forcing them off land they had occupied, the movement offered many homeless refugees in KZN places to build new homes. In a statement explaining its attitude towards foreign Africans, Abahlali basemjondolo said: “An action can be illegal. A person cannot be illegal. A person is a person wherever they may find themselves. If you live in a settlement you are from that settlement and you are a neighbour and a comrade.”
It was a simple, poignant message – but a message that put the rest of South Africa to shame.