ROLE OF LANGUAGE IN XENOPHOBIA

AFTER the so-called Guangzhou racist incident, Africa-China relations suffered huge challenges, which have been rare in recent decades.

Now it seems some narratives of China’s actions have been too negative. I have even read one piece of African editorial comparing China with South Africa during the apartheid era.

Such negative opinions make me quite sad and even upset.

It seems that they forgot or pretended to forget all the past good stories between China and Africa, for example, the TAZARA railway and medical teams to Africa since 1960s.

Not to mention today’s good stories, such as China’s ongoing assistance to Africa in terms of fighting the Covid-19 pandemic.

I do not mean that China is proved 100% innocent in the incident, since it is too early to say that.

But the one thing that is clear is that racism is never China’s official policy or so-called rising and popular public mood. On the contrary, racism is not widely accepted in China.

Eric Olander, the managing editor of The China Africa Project website, says social media played a huge part in how African leaders reacted.

“We saw the raw power of social media that forced African leaders into action much faster than they probably would have reacted before.”

But such fast action is sometimes at the expense of truth, since sometimes “to see is not surely to be true”.

Fake videos or news could be produced in just seconds or minutes, while proving its falsehood could cost days or even longer.

What is worse is that, the most popular information about China spreading in Africa is not made in China, but in the West. Most African

BEING in matric is one of the celebrated years for any school-going kid and their parents.

It is the year that requires considerable effort from all pupils, with the aim of achieving excellent grades, so that they can successfully enrol for their chosen choice of studies at their preferred academic institution.

This year their curriculum has been instantly turned upside down.

The schools had to close earlier for the first term break in an effort to contain the spread of Covid-19.

Since then it has been clear that the infection numbers are

MEDICAL supplies from Guangzhou, donated by the People’s Republic of China to help South Africa fight the Covid-19 epidemic, were offloaded at OR Tambo International Airport. China has helped many African countries fight Covid-19, says the writer. | GCIS

news agencies or TV stations could not afford to send their reporters to China.

In other words, most African images or knowledge about China are produced by and of the West.

But as for the Western media industry, the mainstream paradigm is still “bad news is more worthy of being reported”.

That is to say, the gap between a true China and de facto Western news covered China has been huge for decades.

Now, mainly due to the rise of social media and fall of traditional media, even the Western elites have warned that we are living in the world of post-truth.

The majority of the general public could not do the fact-check work without enough time, skills or knowledge. Even AFP took around two weeks prove that many so-called racist

to increasing and there is nothing that is preventing the surge.

This has made it clear to me that schools are not going to reopen soon because both parents and various key stakeholders are genuinely worried about their children’s health.

As the country is experiencing this surge, all of us as citizens have a responsibility to support the effort to flatten the curve.

It is evident that most of our rural and township schools are not ready, and this has forced the postponement of reopening of schools. evidence of Guangzhou incidents were fake ones. In other words, to some extent, China is innocent despite not all the evidence having been fact checked. Facing the post-truth world, if we watch or encounter a similar incident, what should we do?

My personal advice is that we had better wait instead of rushing to make too quick conclusions without giving them a second thought.

To defeat rumours, we need not only our eyes, but the other two “eyes” – the mindsets of “microscope” and “telescope” together. In many cases, a liquid of sea water could not represent the whole ocean.

For example, even if some evidence were true, it involves only several relevant local restaurants, hotels, policemen and so on.

Not all the local ones are racist, not to mention the whole of China.

The continued closure of schools will therefore compel all of us to rethink our schooling system post the Covid-19 pandemic.

According to my observation, the future of our schooling system depends on what is being done now to ensure the benefit of this year’s matric class.

I am certain a more effective way to handle the remaining schooling year can be achieved.

To a great degree, this is time for digital transformation, and the department of education needs to ensure that all schools are ready to

It is not fair to label the whole of China as a racist state.

“Telescope” refers to the relevant and diversified information and knowledge. The more diversified information and knowledge we have, the more objective judgment would emerge.

A popular ancient Chinese proverb says: “More good advice makes people smart, fewer foolish.” (Jian ting ze ming,

We should not just take for granted that the materials from CNN, BBC, VOA or Facebook and Twitter are 100% true.

Of course, it is a decades-long problem that the direct good communication channels between Africa and China is still quite limited.

Many African friends of mine who have visited China could understand and identify many rumours about China’s roles and influences in Africa, because they have a bigger, more comprehensive and first-hand understanding about China. But most Africans have not visited China.

The use of three “eyes” could take time, but it is worth it.

Because Africa-China relations have been proved more and more important or even essential to each side, not to mention that we are both facing the never-seen-before challenge of the Covid-19 pandemic.

We need to try harder than before to better our ubuntu partnership and make it more inclusive to as many Africans and Chinese, instead of poisoning it by unchecked misinformation and disinformation.

Zhu is from the Centre for West-Asian & African Studies, Shanghai Institutes for International Studies, China and a visiting scholar at Confucius Institute (UJCI)/Centre for Africa-China Studies, at the University of Johannesburg benefit from this present-day reality.

This, therefore, calls for an urgent upgrade of both rural and urban, especially township school infrastructure for the possible betterment of all our pupils.

I am confident that this is possible.

The Gauteng province has set off on this journey and it has produced good results.

Let us as parents and the department embrace information and communication technology for our schools and the future of our children.

IN THE last decade or so, xenophobic attacks have made headlines a number of times in South Africa. The most recent wave occurred in August and September last year.

An overview report by Xenowatch recorded 529 xenophobic incidents that led to 309 deaths; 901 physical assaults and 2 193 looted shops between 1994 and 2018. More than 100 000 people were displaced in this period. Between January and September last year Xenowatch recorded 68 incidents of xenophobic violence, which resulted in 18 deaths, at least 43 physical assaults, 1 449 displaced people and… at least 127 shops looted.

There are complex reasons for xenophobia in South Africa. These include racial and linguistic diversity, low education levels and lack of service delivery.

Impunity is another issue. One aspect that has not been explored is the role that language might play in xenophobia.

We suggest that looking at xenophobia from a sociolinguistic angle could contribute to a better understanding of the phenomenon, and longer-term solutions.

Three questions should guide this discussion. First, what does the South African government do to integrate immigrants on a linguistic level? Second, are immigrants marginalised because of their linguistic backgrounds? Finally, how could linguistic interventions contribute to peacebuilding?

It might be useful here to look at the work done by other countries. Germany, for example, makes it compulsory for migrants to pass a German language test to encourage social integration. But in South Africa something is needed that will work for the country’s multilingual landscape.

South Africa is a linguistically diverse country, with 11 official languages. UN statistics put the population of international migrants – most of them from other African countries – at about 4 million. It has been shown by scholars that migrants tend to use “destination languages” once they arrive in South Africa. The Department of Justice and Constitutional Development has created a national action plan to combat “racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance”, as well as an implementation plan.

The action plan asserts that people may not be discriminated against based on language. But, there is only one reference to language in the implementation plan: to promote and disseminate accessible human rights information and other materials in a simplified form in national and local languages.

This focus on national and local languages excludes immigrants from elsewhere in Africa. The plan also doesn’t explore ways in which immigrants can be integrated on a linguistic level.

On the second question, research has shown that African immigrants in South Africa try to speak local languages to blend in.

Immigrants have told researchers they are “victims of stereotypes, prejudices, intolerance and discrimination”. In a study that focused on Zimbabwean immigrants, participants said they’d been marginalised or attacked by South Africans who accused them of not being able to speak a local indigenous language.

There is clearly a need to destigmatise “foreign” African languages and to give immigrants safe environments to learn our languages. This brings us to the last question.

A linguistic intervention could entail the following:

Educating people about their linguistic and other human rights in languages they understand.

Ensuring that immigrants have safe access to language courses so that they can learn the regional lingua francas. Officials working with immigrants should be trained to understand linguistic and cultural differences. South Africans should be made aware of their own prejudices and unfair stereotyping. In both cases, courses in foreign African languages could be helpful.

Brits is a part-time lecturer at the University of Johannesburg; Kaschula is a professor of African Language Studies at Rhodes University and Docrat is a postdoctoral research fellow (Forensic Linguistics/ Language and Law) at Rhodes University.