23 May 2008
Kampala — It was looking ugly there for a few days, with mobs of South Africans in townships around Johannesburg randomly murdering several dozen "foreigners" (migrants from other African countries) and injuring several hundred.
But now, President Thabo Mbeki has acted decisively: he has announced the establishment of a panel of inquiry into the violence. That should fix it. Just in case he gets impatient while waiting for the panel's report, however, I can tell him what it will say - or at least, what it should say.
It should say that the root problem was his own government's "non-interventionist" policy on immigration: its refusal to control or even count the number of people arriving in South Africa from other African countries.
The mere fact that the commonly used estimate is "three to five million" illegal immigrants says it all: the authorities really have no idea how many foreigners are in South Africa. But the higher estimate is probably closer to the truth, for some four million people have left Zimbabwe alone to seek work abroad, and almost all of them have gone to South Africa.
This "open borders" non-policy had high motives. Many of South Africa's current leaders are men and women who spent decades in exile during the fight against apartheid, and the migrants come mostly from the countries that gave them shelter at that time. How can they turn away people from those countries - from Zimbabwe, above all - now that the shoe is on the other foot?
It is an honourable sentiment, but more easily experienced if, like South Africa's current leaders, you lead a secure and comfortable life in one of the nicer northern suburbs of Johannesburg.
If you happen to live in Alexandra township (not all that far from those pleasant suburbs) amidst garbage and violence and chronic poverty, and you don't have a job, it's a little harder to access such noble emotions - because one-tenth of the people in the country are illegal immigrants, and lots of them do have jobs.
Miserable, underpaid jobs, for the most part, but in a country where the true unemployment rate is somewhere near half, there are bound to be a great many people who resent foreigners getting any jobs at all.
This is especially because there is some truth in the complaint of poor and uneducated South Africans that the illegal immigrants get the unskilled jobs because employers can pay them less and they won't dare complain.
None of this justifies murder, but it does begin to explain it. Mbeki was incredibly foolish to assume that he could just let foreigners flood into the country and not expose them to a popular backlash. The South African media are filled with self-flagellating editorials that all basically ask "What kind of people are we if we can behave like this?"
The answer is: not saintly inhabitants of some imagined "rainbow nation" that has risen above the normal human plane, just ordinary people under pressure and behaving badly.
Last week in Italy, other ordinary people threw Molotov cocktails into Gypsy camps and burned them down.
Most of those people have jobs, live in comfortable surroundings, and eat quite well, and they still behaved badly. There are only about 150,000 Gypsies in Italy, half of whom have been there since the 15th Century. They are less than a-quarter of 1% of the population, and yet 68% of Italians want them all expelled.
The South African poor have been amazingly patient as year after year went by - 14 years now since the end of apartheid - when so little has changed for the better in their lives.
The black poor still loyally vote for the African National Congress (ANC), but their anger was going to burst out somewhere sooner or later. By holding the door open to so many illegal immigrants, the government has guaranteed that they would be the primary target.
Maybe this is some Machiavellian plan to divert popular anger from the government itself, but probably not. It's just that the leaders do not see what has been happening to ordinary people.
How else could Mbeki go on defending Robert Mugabe, the destroyer of Zimbabwe, year after year, when Mugabe's misdeeds were the main reason that this enormous wave of illegal immigrants struck South Africa?
Justice Malala, whose column appears in The Times (the online version of South Africa's Sunday Times), nailed it on Monday when he wrote: "(Our) people are behaving like barbarians because the ANC has failed - despite numerous warnings - to act on burning issues that are well known for having sparked similar eruptions across the globe...
"The Mbeki government's refusal to even acknowledge the crisis in Zimbabwe has resulted in as many as 3 million Zimbabweans walking the streets of South Africa...
"Mbeki's resolute refusal to address the crisis in Zimbabwe - and his friendship with Mugabe - has brought them here. His block-headedness is directly responsible for the eruption of xenophobia."
Such plain talk is not "blaming the victim." It is recognising realities, which is the first step towards addressing them.
And where the despairing poor of South Africa should be addressing their anger is not at helpless Zimbabweans but at the president who let this human catastrophe happen.
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Readers should read the book The Great Reckoning by Sir William Reese Mogg and then look around what is happening world wide the books original title was Blood On The Streets. On what is happeing here now reminds one of "KristalNacht" is Hitler maybe around by any chance these people are no better then the brownshirts and they are the same as the NAZIS. The goverment has to take the blame listen carfully at a lot to the rhetoric and you can here the "racist"comments from the so called non racial ANC. I have read articles no matter the right or wrongs of the past how "whites are not african enough for africa" etc etc it is comments like these that lead to the actions we have seen in South Africa recently. Cleanse your hearts from all your hatred and bitterness first and stop your double talk,some comments made by community leaders i qoute from papers have been why are the "whites indian and others not being attacked" The point i am making it is this kind of talk that enflames the nation when we can or could have made it a great nation but the ANC has spoiled it for enriching a couple of OLD BOYS They are self centred and care none for the masses
Hello Africa, I posted the following comment about 8 hours on an American news web site. It seems we share a common understanding of the problem in South Africa- --------------------------------------
‘Xenophobic’ implies a phobia, an irrational fear of imagined threats. That millions of illegal immigrants have invaded their country is a fact, not a phobia, and it is also a fact that South African citizens suffer economically in the face of multitudes willing to work for nothing. These are hardly phobias.
That the widespread violence has justification in the eyes of the citizenry ensures this uprising will be a tough nut to crack, especially if competent leaders arise from their masses, leaders who realize the real culprit as their own government’s failure to safeguard the sovereignty of the nation, and turn against it.
This is more likely now that the South African government has foolishly engaged its army, when it should have instead addressed the people, and engaged them.
-theantibush
Before 9/11 came along I read a book by Sir William Reese Mogg Counceller of the Exchequer THE GREAT RECKONING i would advise people to read it he actually pointed out all these things going to happen. Goverments are bankrupt and cannot sustain the welfare states any longer. What I have seen in South Africa now reminds me historically of "KristalNacht" is Hitler maybe alive again this borders on NAZISM just in another flavour and colour. The goverment is to blame look at lot of the racial rheotoric that is banterd around by parlimentarians, I will not be surprised if the "other" nationalities "whites,Indians and chinese soon get attacked as well" as we are not deemed "AFRICAN" enough by some african people or am I to believe that this is just a phase!! May God rid all hearts of Hate and Bitterness In Jesus Name!
Mbeki's condoning of Mugabe's continuing dictatorship is a key causal ingredient here.
What I haven't seen mentioned anywhere is the direct impact of the stalled change in government in Zimbabwe, in which Mbeki has had a major role in condoning by his various non-actions and non-condemnations, not to mention his disgusting display of comradeship in the photos beamed globally of him holding hands with brother Bob.
When the MDC won the parliamentary election the world was elated at what they saw coming -- the end of the iron-fist Mugabe dictatorship. Everyone then waited with bated breath for the presidential election results. We all know what has happened there, and the intimidation and brutality since the election.
The point is, thinking people all over were excited at the imminent return to some sanity up north from us. Zimbabweans of all hues were preparing to return home, either as business people to help rebuild their nation, or as peasants and labourers to go back to their more humble dwellings and pick up their lives again.
In South Africa this meant too that the pressures - resulting from the incompetent immigration policies and the mismanagement of Mbeki and his struggle cronies - would get some relief as many Zimbabweans would pack up their homes in the townships and squatter camps and leave for the north.
Black South Africans knew this, and they too must have been ecstatic because this was due to happen any day now -- or so they all believed in their celebratng hearts.
EVERYONE (except Zanu-PF) is disappointed, frustrated and many are very, very angry at the delay in this exodus and rebuilding of Zim. And anger erupts into violence as anger is wont to do. And what we have seen these past days is significantly due to this anger and frustration that is now even worse because it is contrasted by the previous elation and excitement.
The finger again points to the ANC givernment and its ostrich-minded State President.
This ANC government, and in particular its current State President, is busy ruining South Africa just as Mugabe has ruined Zimbabwe. It's clearly time for a change, not just in the country's presidency but also in who governs this country in Parliament and Cabinet.
We need a government that has a vison that ALL South Africans can buy into and be inspired by. And we need a President and a government that is non-racist and not obsessed with colour, quotas, racial preferences; and one that is NOT riddled with fraud and self-enrichment.
Viva the upcoming and first-ever NEW, truly democratic, non-racial, non-croneyism, non-struggle-mentality, COMPETENT government! Viva the imminent NEW South Africa we can ALL be proud of.
Dja! Dis wat ek laaik! Dis wat ekka will hê!
Your comments are so useful. They really raise a good point which I've not seen elsewhere - the sheer staggering disappointment at seeing everyone's hopes for Zimbabwe being shattered or at least left in a weird sort of limbo. And the frustration of years of no-change here, with increasing realisation that the so-called leaders in South Africa simply do not care a fig about the majority of poor people. The pogroms of the last weeks are barbaric indeed, but what about the systematic, callous and willfully blind neglect and injustice which grinds EVERYONE down, day after day. Mbeki has been the most dismaying disappointment with his denials on so many fronts.
Please may I use your comments (with the article they reply to) in my English classes. I work with township and Cape Flats students in a school in Bellville South.
Ingrid
Ingrid, you're welcome to use my post.
Here's another inconvenient thought - about Zimbabwe: Why DID Zim get the President it has, in the first place? Could it have been Nature's response to a country whose economy was supported in no small measure by the sale and export of health-hazardous tobacco? (Just wondering.)
This article is 100% on the money. I feel deeply sorry for all involved in the violence. There have been straws in the wind and I just don't understand why our beloved leaders couldn't see the signs.