Roots Republic

The Problem is apathy, not xenophobia
By: Toni Parsons

The events of May 2008 left a black mark on South Africa’s unfolding story. Residents will have been aware of the approaching situation, even if they didn’t acknowledge it. But the rest of the world appeared to view this as a sudden, inexplicable, series of unfortunate circumstances. There was nothing inexplicable about them.

Surveys and interviews conducted as far back as 1984 indicate that South Africans are almost inherently xenophobic. 1984 saw hundreds of thousands of Mozambicans flooding into South Africa to escape violence in their home country. Xenophobia and Apartheid worked as a team back then, ensuring that the aliens were kept within clearly defined borders, well away from the prospering whites.

The Human Rights Watch reported abuse of African immigrants in 1998 dating back to 1995. In 1996 the Southern African Migration Project was founded and a 2004 study by the project revealed that along with Namibians and Botswanians, South Africans hold by far the harshest views on immigrants. Precious few studies and institutions have come and gone, with those in place recording the same results and the same reports as others before them.

Lindela appears to be the only body set up in South Africa with the sole purpose of ‘repatriating’ immigrants. It was recently the centre of a media furore calling for it to be closed, after a reported extended period of running at a loss. Investigations leading to calls for its closure revealed that Lindela was little more than a deportation centre, with inhabitants left without blankets, undernourished and/or physically assaulted.

The Human Sciences Research Council released a report identifying three general causes for the most recent violence in South Africa. They were relative deprivation, specifically intense competition for jobs, commodities and housing; exclusive citizenship, or a form of nationalism that excludes others; and South African exceptionalism, or a feeling of superiority in relation to other Africans.

African immigrants tend to come from war torn or politically aggravated countries, rendering survival as an illegal immigrant in South Africa more attractive than as a legitimate resident in their home country. Immigrants are likely to have - or have had - a family in their home countries, as well as a community; friends, a local bar, a shop on the corner, a favourite weekend routine. They are not in South Africa to steal jobs or deprive South Africans of what is rightfully theirs.

Unfortunately, for all concerned, South Africa exists under an already straining economy and social system, making the inclusion of yet more people a perilous problem. South Africa’s majority live with electricity, water, housing, employment, healthcare and transport problems that will not conceivably abate in the short term. More people drawing on our resources means less for everyone, and in a country with shocking and ever increasing rates of poverty, there is no space for those without a legitimate claim to the resources.

This makes the addition of ‘outsiders’ or ‘Amakwerekwere’ a very unwelcome situation. Our ‘exclusive citizenship’ problem adds to this. South African immigration laws are hazy to say the least and sites dedicated to providing information on how to get citizenship in South Africa* are vague and unhelpful. .

With the world of broadband close at hand its near on impossible to find information, but Africans needing to get into South Africa will be lucky to have access to a telephone, never mind the big www. This increases the appeal of the quick ‘over the border and into the masses’ dash exponentially. Even when you can get information on how to get citizenship in South Africa, it is costly, time consuming and difficult. This ultimately results in an influx of illegal immigrants who are unable to work legally, and as such will take any work that pays, whether it is undercutting what South Africans are demanding as a wage or not.

The third problem is the one most likely to be resolved, because it rests directly with South Africans. For so long, we have walked around with a sense of ‘otherness’ regarding the rest of Africa, allowing us to view other Africans as ‘outsiders’. While this has its merits for morale at home, South Africa being the Rainbow Nation and ‘First-World of Africa’, it is not in keeping with what we should be aiming for as a country and it is opening up the space for xenophobia. We forget about countries that harboured exiles in the past, and may well need to harbour them in the future. We forget about countries currently harbouring South Africans who have left for political or economic reasons. And we forget about what it is that makes us strong as a nation – compassion, empathy and openness.

We now return to a long chanted ditty about underperformance and lack of response that has become a chief grievance in the new South Africa. In the face of the May xenophobic attacks, President Mbeki droned out a wooden, empty speech with no constructive outlines on action to be taken or on measures to be put in place to deal with the real problem.

Immigrants were placed in temporary shelter, and then moved into camps with a deadline of July 2008 for deportation or repatriation. Deportation or repatriation were the solutions provided for the problem. Just as xenophobia is not the root of the problem, deportation is unlikely to be the solution

Information on whether the repatriation or deportation has actually been enforced doesn’t seem to exist. Of paramount importance however, is the fact that a reported 3000 Zimbabweans are flowing over the border daily. That equates to more people than live in Soweto in a year. That’s just Zimbabweans, some arriving with just the clothes on their backs.

And yet until as recently as last week, our government has reserved comment on other African countries and on the problem of immigrants coming into South Africa. Denying the problem seems to be the school of thought that will make it go away.

Apathy from the government is proving to be a slowly imploding catastrophe for South Africa. Denial of the problems facing the majority of South Africans, and a lack of action at the root of the problem leave the results to fester, leading to an explosion like that in May, with more and increasingly violent outbursts likely to repeat themselves.

Unfortunately, to the rest of the world, we are once again tarred with the racist brush, marked as a violent and aggressive nation. The finer details of the picture and detailed contours of the problem are not seen from afar. It is time that the fundamental and long overdue changes are made, allowing South Africa to fulfil its promise of a country with a better life for all.

* For more information, click on the following links:
· http://www.southafrica.info/travel/documents/immigration.htm
· http://www.ritztrade.com/downloads/Immigration-Laws-SA-July-2005.pdf