Matthew Krouse Down the tube
The term makwerekwere has seeped into our diction over recent years, becoming descriptive of a range of foreign Africans that, as the lie has it, are easily identifiable. Stereotyped in popular culture as drug dealers, unwelcome street traders and corrupt businessmen, the foreigner is emerging as a stock symbol of the negative aspects of change.
On March 9 at 9.30pm, SABC2 will air an apt antidote to the nation’s nastiness – a documentary challenging narrow perceptions of who local Francophones actually are.
How the languages of the streets all converged to describe a homogeneous, foreign African character, suspected of opportunism, isn’t entirely mysterious in a stressed-out city like Johannesburg.
Dealing with cultural difference must be highly frustrating in the crowded flats, where black South Africans share their meagre resources with the poor from other countries. It’s a daily battle going on in the black side of town while, in the plush suburbs, seclusion has kept people relatively free from small-scale racial conflicts.
Aliens or Broers: Francophone African Immigrants in Johannesburg, directed by Thulani Mokoena, is an hour-long documentary illustrating how these recent arrivals are often the bearers of the best that humanity has to offer.
The work follows a number of African individuals who have made the city home. Beginning at sunrise in Hillbrow, we follow Marcellin Zounmenou – a teacher from Benin who arrived in the country in 1994 – as he takes a taxi to Soweto where he teaches French at Masekhene High School, under the auspices of the Alliance Francaise.
Entering his classroom, Zounmenou is greeted in chorus by his standing students, in fluent French. The moment suggests that if these kids learn to understand their new neighbours, they may overcome today’s petty problems.
Zounmenou, it is revealed, holds a masters degree in linguistics. He is one of many hard-working foreigners on the programme that also includes two women doctors, a pastor, some university students and a Muslim cleric.
The last section of the documentary follows Zounmenou back to his mud home in rural Benin where we meet his family, experience voodoo ceremonies and visit his father’s grave. Far from the bustle of Hillbrow, as the teacher’s old mother greets her son with joyous wails, and as we get an intimate look at Zounmenou’s household, one reflects on the words of the Senegalese doctor, Kabamba Muteba: “If you go to other countries in Africa and people know you are a foreigner they will invite you in.”
Unfortunately, though, she remarks, “I’ve never seen that in South Africa. I’m here, it will be seven years, and I’ve never been invited into a black South African’s house.”
Sounds bleak, but in response the crew visits a friendly drinking hole in a flat in Hillbrow, endeavouring to get a more positive angle. Here among the Bradlows trappings, locals have welcomed foreigners and, in a playful act of provocation, the proprietor instructs her foreign guests on the rudiments of the local greeting.
Outside a mosque, in the heat of a traditional sacrifice honouring a North African saint, we meet a South African woman who, it is discovered, has married a foreigner, taken on his religion and now feels like a foreigner herself.
She is one more player in the programme that must be praised for going the extra mile to illustrate the many sides of this intricate scenario.
One small criticism: we know that there are foreign Africans in the country who are involved in underhand practices. These the documentary conveniently ignores, painting a picture that at times looks a little too rosy.