Wilson Johwa
27 October 2008
Johannesburg — ALEXANDRA, site of the May 11 outbreak of xenophobic violence, is a favourite of many a researcher.
The attacks on foreigners appear to have added to the allure of a township that began 90 years ago and is named after the wife of the farmer who owned part of the original land.
Shacks, brick structures and three old single-sex hostels - they are all here, supporting a teeming community of workers, small-time entrepreneurs, thugs and many of Johannesburg's new arrivals.
However, just a few months after the attacks led to the violent ejection of foreigners in a frenzy that claimed 62 lives countrywide - a third of them South Africans -- it is hard to find any obvious signs of that period. Even harder, nobody will own up to any involvement or admit to knowing anyone who was involved. It is much like the conspiracy of silence after a playground fight.
But researchers at the University of Witwatersrand's Forced Migration Studies Programme are determined to unpack the likely reasons for the carnage. To understand why hostility exploded in some places and not in others with similar conditions, they believe the answer lies in how the communities are organised.
"We're not interested in actually finding individuals who did that but in whether there was kind of a community mobilisation that was behind it," says Jean Pierre Misago, who is leading the fieldwork. Along with his team of four researchers, they are scouring 10 carefully chosen sites for evidence to challenge their main assumption. It is that the violence was largely community-inspired and mainly centred on places where formal institutions were weak or considered illegitimate. "So far that's what we're finding - that official structures were pushed away and hijacked by informal groups that have become the legitimate representatives of the communities," Misago says.
The researchers are looking at sample sites affected by the violence and at others that were not. They have been to Itirileng informal settlement outside Pretoria, Diepsloot, two sections in Thembisa and another two in Alex. Also on the list are Dunoon and Masiphumelele in Western Cape, Motherwell in Eastern Cape and Atteridgeville near Pretoria.
The study comes as questions still dwarf explanations for the surprise attacks. The government's own migration policies have been condemned for fostering corruption and creating a parallel labour market. A government-appointed task team failed to account for what triggered the violence. In Gauteng alone, 600 people were arrested for the violence but not all appeared in court. "There are cases that did not proceed, the reason being not being able to find certain witnesses as well as the complainants themselves," says Tladi Tladi, spokesman for the National Prosecuting Authority.
But not everyone thinks communities were mobilised for the attacks on foreigners. For instance, Themba, a member of the community policing forum and a resident of Nobuhle Hostel in Alexandra, argues that if the violence was premeditated, then the police would by now have pounced on the culprits.
Misago says fear of powerful elements within communities is what precludes finger-pointing. "It's not that the culprits are not known," he says. Typical of a poor community, Alex has the mark of a community under the control of an array of structures. "Even if these are not formal structures, you can see that the leaders know what's going on and have some control," says Misago.
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