ISS Today
30 June 2008: Less Sugar-Coating For Victims Of Xenophobia In South Africa

Meet Tendai*. He is smartly dressed in a grey shirt, black jeans and a matching dark tie. He is articulate and knowledgeable. He is a Zimbabwean national and he seems like the kind of person that would be at home in any African capital city. He offers me a firm handshake. He then goes on to tell my colleagues and me how he ended up at the Rand Airport camp for displaced foreigners.

He explains that until March of this year he was working as a teacher in Zimbabwe. However, due to the political and economic turmoil in that country he decided to make his way to South Africa - as have thousands of other Zimbabweans. Although life has not been easy for him in South Africa, he had at least managed to hold down some odd jobs that actually paid him a wage. However, this was before the May 2008 violent xenophobic attacks that have left over 62 African foreigners (and some nationals) dead and close to 30 000 displaced.

The Rand Airport camp is now home to 1 600 foreigners. With the help of five other teachers, Tendai spends his time at the camp teaching and counseling close to 70 school going children. A double-decker bus that was used to transport him and other displaced people to the camp is for now being used as a classroom. The tents at the camp are provided by the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR). Tendai is hopeful that a large tent will soon be put up for them to use as a school.

At another camp in Midrand – the area that also houses the Nepad Secretariat and by extension the Mbeki-led African Renaissance – we ran into a number of foreigners that have for the past decade or more considered themselves as being South African. Somber looking mothers kept encouraging their children (who often wore smiles on their faces) to express themselves in one of the local languages as if to show that they belong. The camp is home to over 400 displaced foreigners.

Camps and sites such as these can now be found throughout the provinces of Gauteng, Western Cape and Kwa-Zulu Natal, which seem to have bore the brunt of the xenophobic attacks. In other instances, people have spent the last three weeks at temporary shelters that have been set up at police stations.

Most of the inhabitants at the camps in Gauteng are from Zimbabwe, Mozambique, Malawi and Zambia. These are the same countries that have traditionally provided the cheap labour that has for years been relied upon by South Africa’s capitalists – particularly the mining industry. Interestingly, these would also appear to be the same countries whose local businesses have had to close shop and lay off workers due to the stiff competition that has come with the entry of South African multi-nationals into their own countries.
Across the country, most of the displaced people are too scared to go back to the townships especially if Government cannot guarantee their security. Meanwhile, Government is insisting that they have two months to decide about going back to the townships.

According to Tendai, the ideal situation for him and those at his camp would be for Government and the UN agencies to relocate them to a more permanent site where they can re-start their lives and not a “refugee camp” as such. He was also keen to stress that returning to “Robert Mugabe’s Zimbabwe” was out of the question.

Government has been criticised by the opposition, civil society and the diplomatic corps for not reacting fast enough to this evolving humanitarian crisis. It was during this time of heightened uncertainty and inaction that some foreigners actually decided to go back to their home countries. According to the South African Human Rights Commission chairman Jody Kollapen, more than 40000 people have left South Africa since the xenophobic attacks began.

In the absence of a well-coordinated Government response many people have had to tap into their sense of activism and generosity. Well known NGOs such the Treatment Action Campaign, Oxfam, the Red Cross, the UNHCR, the AbahlalibaseMjondolo (South African shack-dwellers’ movement), corporate companies and religious leaders have joined hands with ordinary South Africans and non-nationals in their attempts to help the displaced. In the true spirit of the South Africa that many of us have come to know and defend, people from all walks of life and from across the racial fault-lines of this rainbow nation, have donated food, clothes and blankets.

In the meantime, panels, researchers and task-teams such as the one set up by President ThaboMbeki are being called upon to investigate the causes of the attacks. In addition, two weeks ago, the Minister of Home Affairs NosiviweMapisa-Nqakula declared that the South African government was planning to overhaul its immigration system. A key issue of focus in this regard is to deter foreigners from taking advantage of the loopholes in the South African immigration system.

Television programme schedules are now also packed with infomercials that show us cosmopolitan and sleek-looking celebrities, musicians, DJ’s, poets, soap opera stars, young business leaders and even cultural critiques reminding us that we are one, we are Africans and that South Africans should love each other and other Africans. For their part, some analysts and public intellectuals are arguing that the key issue is to educate the township poor about xenophobia and to expose them to African history.

One can’t help but wonder as to whether these messages are actually being seen by those that they are meant for. In fact, despite the good intentions of some of these peace and love campaigns, it must be said that some of them tend to patronise and talk down to the poor. In other instances, the xenophobes are simply blamed for the sake of it and/or singled out because they lack something.

Few of the response initiatives that have been identified so far can genuinely get to grips with the key issue of socio-economic inequality and the provision of the necessary social services so that people can stop seeing their foreign neighbours as an economic threat. In addition, neither do they address the psychosocial issues concerning self-hate and the enculturation of positive self-identifications.

More pertinently, it is within this context that people such as Tendai have found it necessary to remind us that what he needs is“less politicking and sugar-coating”, but more action on those things that can really help him to restart his life and his relationships with his local neighbours.

Dr Andrew Kanyegirire, Researcher, Crime, Justice and Policing Programme, ISS Tshwane (Pretoria)

* Not his real name.