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South Africa: Dying to Explain Blood in Alexandra
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Business Day (Johannesburg)
COLUMN
16 May 2008
Posted to the web 16 May 2008
Aubrey Matshiqi
Johannesburg
SOCIAL and political phenomena are seldom reducible to a single explanation. This applies to most conflicts, including the xenophobic barbarism that has engulfed the Johannesburg township of Alexandra.
The attacks on foreigners from other parts of the African continent by Alexandra residents have been explained (or justified) in many ways. Some perpetrators argue that "they are stealing our jobs and women" and "are responsible for crime". Because the line between explanation and justification can be thin in situations of conflict, we must seek understanding of what are possibly multidimensional explanations for these attacks. But in doing this, we must not relegate the need to condemn the violence to the status of a secondary impulse, subordinating it to what is paraded as cold analysis.
I wonder what poet Mongane Wally Serote must be thinking about the xenophobes of Alexandra. During the struggle against apartheid, Serote wrote a poem in which Alexandra is personified as a mother. In it he writes: "I cry Alexandra when I am thirsty/ Your breasts ooze the dirty waters of your donga/ Waters diluted with the blood of my brothers, your children". During the dark days of apartheid, these lines signified the violence of the apartheid government and the poor social and economic conditions the evil system imposed on the people of Alexandra. The looting, rapes and lawlessness of the past week have given the poem a different meaning. Today the breasts of Alexandra ooze "waters diluted with the blood" of foreigners. Today, when the whole of Africa should be home to all her children, Alexandra is not your home if your complexion is darker than that of South Africans or you speak in a tongue foreign to them.
Why is it that history is full of people who have suffered prejudice-based violence, who themselves later become impelled by prejudice into imposing suffering on others? I will not enter the debate about whether the violence in Alexandra is a product of xenophobia or not because my appetite for pointless intellectualising is low at the moment. I am not oblivious to the possibility of underlying frustrations about poor socioeconomic conditions being among the drivers and triggers behind the violence. What I find interesting is the fact that the frustrations have manifested themselves in the form of attacks on foreigners. This is what makes them xenophobic.
I AM baffled by statements made by some, including some leaders of the ruling party, that "there is a criminal element that is hiding behind xenophobia". What does this mean? Does it mean that the marauding hordes of Alexandra are criminals pretending to be xenophobic when they target foreigners? What I find even more baffling is the argument that we should not condemn the people of Alexandra because we speak from the safety of leafy suburbs. Furthermore, we are told, these foreigners live in poor communities and we are, therefore, insulated from the social and economic pressures they impose.
Were it not for my upbringing, I would be responding with words such as "hogwash", "poppycock" and "balderdash". All I will say is that we should not insult and patronise the poor with our paternalism.
Others have bemoaned what they call "lack of leadership". While this sentiment has some merit, we must avoid the temptation to outsource our moral responsibilities to our leaders and the state. As individuals, we must make the fight against xenophobia and all other types of prejudice our fight. This must start with avoiding the use of language that strips foreigners of their dignity and humanity. The process of dehumanising the foreigner and of creating an "other" starts in our homes when, in front of our children, we use pejorative terms such as "makwerekwere". I am not innocent of this. I have myself used language that dehumanises the foreigner, and have thus contributed towards the creation of a climate for xenophobic attacks.
But if we do not change, we will soon be attacking Vendas, Pedis, homosexuals and others for "taking our jobs".
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Matshiqi is senior associate political analyst at the Centre for Policy Studies
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