Today the media are full of the barbaric xenophobic attacks that have been taking place in and around Johannesburg over the past week or so.
Quite right, too.
It’s interesting, however, that the xenophobic murders of hundreds of Somali refugees in the Cape Town area some months ago never prompted the same aghast response of shock and horror from the media.
What a shame that the xenophobia which is so characteristic of Africa in general and South Africa in particular is being portrayed as a recent phenomenon. Very little recognition has been given to the fact that xenophobia has always been an intrinsic part of African life throughout the continent and I doubt that much will change in that regard.
The Xhosa hate the Zulu. The Hutu hate the Tutsi. The Shona sneer at the Matebele. The Bushman and San are reviled by everyone. The list is as long as the number of tribes on the continent. And it is not new; many of the efforts of the past colonial powers went towards quelling and controlling the culturally traditional internecine strife between the peoples under their yoke and trying to instill a wider sense of purpose – to no avail, it would appear.
Whatever the reasons for intra-African xenophobia, it is a fact that it exists and is so deep-seated as to be all but ineradicable in the foreseeable future – notwithstanding the best efforts of sociologists, anthropologists, psychologists and panels of so-called experts called upon to explain and remedy the periodic flare-ups that occur in a general climate of simmering distrust and demonising mythologisation.
Under such circumstances it doesn’t take much to throw the spark leading to conflagration.
South Africa is a good case in point.
- The thrusting together of large numbers of people from diverse and historically antagonistic groups in the overcrowded ghetto-like environments of townships and squatter camps.
- Large-scale and uncontrolled illegal immigration from poorer neighbouring countries.
- Insufficient, inefficient and corrupt delivery of the most basic of human needs to those who have been deprived for so long.
- Poor education facilities and expertise from kindergarten on upwards.
- Insufficient work leading to an excess of available time to drink and seethe on the perceived causes of various misfortunes.
- Failure by government and its organs to devise and enforce policies and practices to, firstly, control and then eradicate crime and its consequences.
- Failure by community, municipal, provincial and national leaders to elevate themselves as role models away from the basest elements of human behaviour.
- Failure by the above leaders to acknowledge and actively address numerous problems, ranging from crime, policing, corruption, HIV/AIDS, service delivery and so on through to public office probity.
These are just some of the factors which make it too easy to find scapegoats when life gets a bit tougher than usual. And the scapegoats are, all too often, those who, for some reason or another, don’t fit into the usual patterns of local life; those from outside the country, outside the district, outside the neighbourhood – the most vulnerable because they are isolated and, therefore, easy targets. The savagery of the attacks is peculiarly African – witness the days of the Congolese uprisings, the ‘necklacings’ of South Africa and the genocide of Rwanda and Burundi.
Such targeting, of course, is the course of the ignorant and the cowardly – those too lazy to make the effort to properly evaluate the causes of their present predicament and too craven to challenge those events or people truly responsible for their plight (including, I might add, themselves).
The response of our government has been to convene a panel to investigate the causes and results of the violence in the townships.
Whoops! Wrong thing to do – at least, in the short-term. Fine for the longer view and for the formulation of later policy.
Short-term – get the situation immediately under control. If the police can’t handle it (and they seem, as ever, to be struggling) then get troops in. Separate the rival groups. Patrol the streets. Shoot dead (remember the words of the Deputy Minister of Safety and Security?) the attackers and opportunistic looters.
This is a time for resolute and firm action to quell the trouble before it becomes even more widespread and indiscriminate. This is not the time for anguished hand-wringing or high-minded political and social theorising. Fix the problem now and worry about fixing the blame later, when time permits.
Already I can hear the gasps of disbelief from the rest of the world – and the increasingly overt sniggers over our inability to face up to the daily realities of running a Third World country.
Worse still, I can hear the cries of despair from our own people as they witness yet another step into chaos and depravity.
Spearpoint.
19th May 2008
As evidenced by the brain drain that has hit South Africa over the last few years, and the number of South Africans living in Europe it’s a sad fact that many South Africans themselves felt threatened by “Xenophobia” when they lived in their own country and decided to leave.