Andile Mngxitama
3 July 2008
opinion
WEEK ONE
The sms's came fast and furious. As furious as the fiery images we were subjected to by our television and our daily newspapers. I dreaded opening a newspaper for days - afraid of being confronted by yet another grisly product of the negrophobic xenophobic violence, which by the end of week three had claimed the lives of about one hundred people and displaced about 100 000, according to some estimates. The mind spins out of its axis, out of the normal.
As the Alexander Township burnt, I was reading text messages from my cappuccino-loving Tito Mboweni-fearing middle class friends. The messages were generally along these lines; "I'm so embarrassed to be South African right now", or more engaging: "I'm so tired of feeling angry about this and not being able to do something about it..." . Email lists held similar messages of shame; at least Winnie Madikizela-Mandela went to Alexander and told the terrified victims cramped at the police station; "We are sorry, please forgive us. South Africans are not like this", before hopping back into her nice car and driving back to her life.
Desmond Tutu, our beloved archbishop of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) followed with another "sorry, we are not like that". The leader of the narrow Zulu nationalist movement, Dr Gatsha Buthelezi, went to the police station as well and cried for the cameras, at the same time as his followers from the hostel he had just addressed continued their war cry that they would kill all the "foreigners", Hambani! Of course our president in waiting, Mr. Jacob Zuma, was also told by an angry crowd, "Go back to Mozambique with your Mozambiquens." Apparently his favourite solo "Mshini wam" is sung by the marauding gangs as they go about their murderous deeds. The killings, burning and looting continued. Something has definitely broken, the despised are telling their leaders in their faces that they must all go to hell.
A former fiery revolutionary, now a sadistic tax collector friend, phoned one night, also indignant, saying "we need to do something". He decried the barbarism of the Alexander attackers. The next days, an sms announced the clarion call; "fight xenophobia! Donate food, clothes and money if possible." I thought about a nice warm latte as an incentive for risking ones life and limb in the fight against Xenophobia via ones cheque-book. Donating your last summer wardrobe is a great revolutionary act, these days. But it's the hypocrisy I find even more interesting. We are not like them!
If you talk with any black African who has been trying to get refugee status in South Africa you will soon realise that you have a better chance of success at being a midwife to a lioness than being declared a refugee in this land of Mandela. Truth is the many squatter camps which host millions of South Africans are nothing but permanent refugee camps. The multitudes that are trapped in these squatter camps are the excluded of our democracy. Their lives are punctuated by violence 24/7. The multiple violence of hunger, denigration, hopelessness and perpetual terror of what the state is going to do next The poetry of the Abahlali baseMjondolo tells the story of legalised state sponsored violence against the squatters better. Their story is indeed the story of the millions of other squatters.
WEEK TWO
In slow motion the human rights industry, the government and social movements started to respond to the violence. Frantic meetings were called. The donor world opened its humanitarian wallets. For the first time in a long time I heard that "money was not the problem." So besides the weekly meetings coordinated by our Chapter 9 institutions (the Human Rights Commission, the Commission on Gender Equality, the Office of the Public Protector etc), the social movements called a march through Hillbrow.
The squatter camps continue to burn, the death toll rises, three demands from both the chapter 9s and civil society become solidified: bring in the army, set up special courts to try the perpetrators and declare a moratorium on arrests and deportations of black Africans. Later a fourth call emerges, where is the president of the country?
The soldiers come in, the special court has been prepared, but a moratorium on deporting the undesirables is proving tricky. The relevant minister has issued a statement, some people celebrate, but they hadn't read the small print; she said, "Possible suggestions included issuing temporary residence permits,"
I think it is here where champagnes corks were popped, but in the haste to celebrate we didn't hear her say "so that everyone in the country would at least be recorded and fingerprinted, in the interests of security and stability".
Tell you what, if I'm black and from the African continent and have seen what the government of South Africa has done to us in the past 14 years I would run away with my finger prints. The post-1994 state regularly sends out the message that black Africans are undesirables. The media portrays "illegals" as criminals, there is everyday public harassment by the police and the home affairs department. These are part of the undeclared war against black Africans. The Lindela repatriation centre is a concentration camp reserved solely for black Africans. There are no white kwerekweres in our country. If you are white you get your papers promptly - papers you don't need because no police are going to be strip searching you in the street. Cynically, some of the politicians denouncing the Alex people are beneficiaries of Lindela blood money.
As it always happens, the psychology of violence operates on the basis of the weakest link. The kwerekweres are already marked out for harassment by state institutions. Now the poor citizenry are finishing off the job in a demented frenzy. Now we are calling on the same government to help quell the violence it has helped structure. We have a crisis on our hands, thinking has been outlawed
If one paid attention and looked carefully at the body language of those of us who have expressed the most outrage at this barbarity you would see that our concerns are unified by one main consideration - we are not like them, the mad backward, blood thirsty barbarians who don't know what we are all Africans. They are stupid idiotic fools, sies bayasinyanyisa! I think about the hidden relief of Ivan's friends in Tolstoy's short masterpiece "the death of Ivan Ilych". At one point Tolstoy reports; "In addition to speculations as to the possible changes and promotions which the news of his death gave rise to, the very fact of the death of one they had known so well made each of the rejoice that it was his friend rather than himself who had died". In this case, we the enlightened middle classes are in some ways delighted that it was not us who burnt the kwerekweres. We wouldn't do something like that, would we now? Tolstoy says it better: "Fancy that: he is dead, I'm not".
Our government also saw the opening and its message has been self-righteous, driving Professors Mamdani and Terreblanche to retort:
"We read in the paper that the conflicts in the townships betray the leaders of the struggle in South Africa. But is it not the other way around; that people feel betrayed because they continue to live in apartheid-like conditions?"
The Saturday morning of the march we gather at a park on the base of Hillbrow, the notorious and controversial seedy suburb long abandoned by god and whites. Colourful scuffs, branded clocks shoes, babies strapped on backs or on trendy prams, it's a happy multiracial march of the enlightened. We snake through Hillbrow, the dangerous suburb we can't be caught dead in. There are teary moments when a building full of hands waves at our courageous and righteous stand. We wave back, we whistle and clap hands, and it's a cool sixties-like moment - "one love!"- black and white together, it's a reassuring illusion. We are euphoric; the lapsed left of yesteryear which has given to minting. It has also come out of the woodwork as well, the golf course can wait until later. Together.
It's better to think of this outbreak of black violence as some atavistic unexplainable black lashing out at the black. Some deep black thing still untamed by our white God and white education. A failed socialisation process. To think of this violence as a consequence of the relatively comfortable lives we lead would be too much, but if we look at the wealth enjoyed by our white counterparts, if you follow the money trail, historically you will see that the creation of Sandton (that super rich suburb) was made possible by the creation of the sprawling Alexandra (favella right at its door step). Alexandra is the direct product of Sandton. This is a troubling formulation: it points an accusatory finger at the rich. And to be rich is to be white. It says "the violence you see is an outcome of the plunder of your forbearers."
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At last somebody who really knows what he is talking about.