While xenophobic attacks are happening in SA, most of us are avoiding this conversation about it all

As of Wednesday morning, five people were announced as having died, after targeted attacks on foreign owned businesses where looting happened in South Africa.

There has been widespread condemnation of the attacks from the highest office in that country as well as other sections of society. Add to that fellow African leaders too. Some like Zimbabwe’s Emmerson Mnangagwa, encouraging ‘a little force’ to quell the xenophobic attacks.

Artists have had their say, mostly on the side of those affected by the violence, the xenophobic attacks on foreign nationals who have made the country home.

Twitter has been full of its extremes, from those who say this is all madness and products from South Africa should be kicked out of their home countries while some have backed the xenophobic attacks.

Then there are those who have spent countless hours debating over what to call them. Are they xenophobic? Are the afrophobic? Is this just looting? Is there an overreaction?

It is not by accident, the word xenophobic is used repetitively because it has to be seen for what it is. It has been festering and politicians from President Cyril Ramaphosa in his now famous call for a clampdown on foreigners. Soon after that, foot soldiers embraced the command in places like Mpumalanga

The DA’s Herman Mashaba, the Johannesburg mayor in 2017 said he was not happy with visiting his family in the townships and going to buy bread from ‘someone I don’t know’.

Both have walked back on the comments and in this cycle of violence, have condemned the xenophobic violence, Mashaba even calling for the deployment of the South African National Defence Forces.

EFF leader Julius Malema has been consistently on the side of Africans as one saying, even if the ANC were to lose votes for condemning violence then so be it.

And yet, South Africa’s history with xenophobia does not start with these two. The attitude towards foreigners even precedes 1994 when black majority came into place.

Blacks fleeing violence in Mozambique due to civil war between 1984 and the end of hostilities were denied access, refused refugee status mostly. Lebowa banned foreigners in total while Ganzakulu did give some sort of assistance. Oddly enough, around that time, places such as Zimbabwe and Zambia housed South African comrades in exile from apartheid South Africa.

The Congolese who fled war between 1993 and 1997 were even denied simple things such as primary healthcare.

Outside the legal system, what is abundantly clear is that the existence of African foreigners is embraced begrudgingly, as exhibited by the actions of those who have to abide by laws and international statutes.

Without the remarks of leaders, more often than not, bigoted views are kept under wraps in favour of more ‘rainbow nation’ approach.

However, there exists a danger, in making this about South Africa and that nation alone.

There is a bigger conversation at play. The world’s conversation have increasingly become nationalist with a default towards country over humanity. We have watched a deglobalisation of much of the world, as the fight for dwindling resources as populations expand.

The conversations around the future had a common cause. But much like the treatment of the Mozambicans in the 80s by South Africans, the reaction is varied. One section wants love to grow while the other says, ‘my country first’.

With South Africa, the tools for other forms of expression are difficult to employ in a country that defines inequality. An example of that is the looking left and right on the road the divides Sandton and Alexandra.

Policies are seen to made on one side and meant to be accepted on the other.

This is a dangerous path especially as Africa has started to have more a continental approach to dealing with its issues. While the appetite for integration appears to be growing, infatuation with colonial borders has resulted in flags before humans. The latter is populist was the rallying point for a many a struggle for identities in these countries and a departure from that means a possible loss in votes as it means a redefinition of the body politic.

So an inclusive nature still feels a little distant. In addition to that, those who have gained power, money, access and so forth have the comfort of shape-shifting conversations to suit occasions.

And that is where much stands. Inequality.

There are the many who will argue, well why not argue against inequality in the context of the local blacks. Well, they speak, act, drink, behave like the rest do, so otherism is an easier thing. After all, we applauded when people left the hood and came up. And the reason the rest of us can’t do the come-up is these foreigners who have come and taken resources such as our houses and so forth. Do you know they take our women too?

It is easier that way.

And yet, the root cause, while easy to talk about it all, isn’t that the foreigner is necessarily a bad guy. He or she represents the resources the locals feel should have been theirs, not necessarily as handouts, but as a system should have equipped them to have.

It is that fight for the marketed individualisation of access to resources that needs a conversation. The idea that communities as a define people rather than outliers needs to be revisited. The obsession with singular narratives around success, ambition, happiness and life divorced from everything needing to be tied to the material needs revisiting.

In a world with a healthy left-wing, it would be easy to balance the struggles. But where right wing capitalist ideologies are now star attractions, the inequality only means to grow.

And with it, the xenophobic attacks.

But without the conversation around rising inequality without systems empowering the impoverished, everything else is just a sticker on a stab wound…

Subscribe to Blog via Email