/ 26 July 2010

Soccer fans take stand against xenophobia

More than 16 000 soccer fans — the majority of them Zimbabweans — attended the inaugural Ubuntu Derby at the Johannesburg Stadium on Sunday afternoon.

The match was organised by civil society to encourage South Africans and foreign nationals to stand together against xenophobia.

Foreign nationals have been the target of sporadic attacks in the Western Cape and Gauteng since the final weekend of the Soccer World Cup two weeks ago. Hundreds of foreign nationals are reported to have returned to their home countries fearing a repeat of the xenophobic violence in May 2008 which left 62 people dead.

In Sunday’s Ubuntu Derby, South African first-division side Jomo Cosmos played to a 0-0 draw against Bulawayo-based giants, Highlanders.

According to businessman Doc Mthethwa, who drove 670km from Bulawayo to watch the game, a draw was the perfect result. “It means that people can unite to be equal,” he said.

More than R300 000 was raised through ticket sales. Once the stadium hire has been paid, the remainder will be channelled towards vulnerable children, skills development, repatriation programmes and the continuation of the anti-xenophobia campaign, says Joyce Dube, founder and director of the Southern Africa Women’s Institute for Migration Affairs (Sawima).

“One of our priorities is to help Zimbabweans who want to return home, but who may have left because of political reasons or criminal records, to be fully integrated back into their home communities,” Dube added.

Highlanders fans — many of them wearing their team’s black-and-white colours, waving freshly-printed flags and chanting their team’s nickname, “Bosso” (the bosses) — outnumbered their South African counterparts by approximately 10 to one.

Celebrating common Africanness
But Siza Bukhali, resplendent in a crimson overall topped off with a matching cowboy hat, said that 1 000 of his fellow-Cosmos fans had scattered themselves around the stadium, mixing with the Zimbabweans “to celebrate a sense of our common Africanness”.

Moroka Swallows’ Pimville branch chairperson Rasta Mokhari, of Castle Lager’s popular pre-World Cup advert “inqaba” (cheers) fame, added that, “As South Africans who love soccer, we are totally against xenophobia.”

For the many Bulawegians present, it was a rare opportunity to watch their beloved Highlanders play in Johannesburg.

An emotional Meandson Murwa, a construction scaffolding erector, said: “It’s the first time I’ve waved a Highlanders flag in the six years I’ve lived here. This means more than the World Cup to us. We are very far from home, but today we are happy.”

Bateny Moyo, a Zimbabwean living in South Africa since 1994, said he was “most grateful” to Jomo Cosmos owner Jomo Sono for hosting the match. He added that, “There should be more games like this with teams from Mozambique, Zambia, Botswana and Malawi to unite Africans.”

Sawima sent letters to “many clubs”, Dube said, but Sono was the first to respond.

Some fans at the match took the opportunity to express their political views, including a smattering of T-shirts embossed with the charging bull logo of the newly-resuscitated Zimbabwean African Peoples Party (Zapu).

Zapu supporters in Matabeleland bore the brunt of Robert Mugabe’s Gukurahundi campaign during the early 1980s, intended to snuff out political opposition.

“Mugabe must go!” read one placard, cut hastily from the sides of a cardboard box, while another supporter invited fellow Zimbabweans to “come back to Zimbabwe with us and drink when Mugabe dies”.

But, for people like Doc Mthethwa, the day was really about ubuntu: “You know, if they saw an event like this, the same person who thought up the word ‘xenophobia’ would scratch it out of the dictionary,” he said.