Jeanette Lutova (44) cannot pronounce the word “elbow” in all 11 official languages. She has no tell-tale “Marie biscuit” immunisation scar.
Though she and her two daughters are up to date on the current plot twists in Generations, she hasn’t heard of, let alone can understand, the lyrics of Mandoza’s kwaito hit, Nkalakata. And though she has lived through political turmoil, she cannot toyi-toyi.
A dog-eared Russian translation of Sidney Sheldon’s A Stranger in the Dark is tucked next to the passenger seat of the taxi she drives. Lutoya is a “kwere-kwere“. A foreigner. One of thousands of foreigners supposedly streaming across South Africa’s borders to sponge up national resources, steal jobs, commit crimes, and make off with our men (or women).
But since she arrived in the country with her family nine years ago, fair-haired, blue-eyed Lutova has not been subjected to the unscientific modus operandi of local police in sniffing out “amakwere-kwere” she has not been asked what the word “elbow” is in any South African language. She and her husband Shamil, a former musician with the famous Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow, work as cab drivers, ferrying people in and around the City of Gold.
If she has any insecurities, they are about being a woman out late at night, or relating to a few minor altercations with colleagues when she worked for a butchery in Randburg. But on the whole, South Africa and its people are “wonderful” compared to famously aloof Muscovites who were as cold, she recalls, as the air they breathed.
The living room of Esther Favel’s flat bears testimony to how much she loves South Africa. Every nook and cranny is filled with sandstone carvings, wooden sculptures, skin-covered drums and stacks of Huisgenoot magazines.
Her three daughters, two of whom sit on the carpet finishing Afrikaans homework, titter as she explains in broken English her only encounter with xenophobia. It was a tussle over whose day it was to use the washing line, which ended with her then-friend, a stout Afrikaans-speaking woman. “Why don’t you just go back to your country, these flats are for Afrikaners anyway!” the woman yelled at her.
Born in a small town called Ma’lot in Israel, Favel and her husband David settled permanently in South Africa 10 years ago. Their three daughters attend local schools and switch fluently between Hebrew and English, and their mother can whip up a dish of pap as easily as she makes latkes.
Petite, clad in platform takkies and with a twinkle in her eye, Favel refers to her countless friends by their flat numbers the lady in 10, or the family in 27. She even shares breyani tips with the Muslim couple living next door. And as the caretaker of the building, she makes it her business to know and be friendly to everyone. That foreigners should feel so at home may appear surprising in a country notorious for its “frighteningly high” levels of xenophobia.
In its 1999 Still Waiting for the Barbarians research document, the South African Migration Project (Samp) found that “the majority of South Africans are resoundingly negative towards any immigration policy that might welcome newcomers”. The researchers noted that opposition to immigrants cuts across colour lines.
Various human rights bodies in South Africa, such as the Roll Back Xenophobia campaign and Lawyers for Human Rights, have documented abuses by authorities directed at black foreigners. Several have reported being harassed by police because they are “too black” to be nationals, or “don’t sound South African” and are thus assumed to be illegal immigrants.
Even dark-skinned locals have been herded into police vans and repatriated. But at any given time the sight of a pale face at the Lindela detention facility in Krugersdorp, a transit point for illegal foreigners prior to deportation or repatriation, is rare.
An inmates’ list by geographical breakdown is telling. With the exception of a handful of Pakistani nationals, an Iraqi and a lone Taiwanese citizen, the names of non-African countries do not feature. Sometimes groups of East Asian woman are brought in when police smash prostitution rings. But non-African foreigners are not all necessarily in South Africa legally.
In Johannesburg there are pockets of communities from Eastern Europe, Portugal, Russia, several North African countries and states that were formed after the break-up of the Soviet Union.
Hassan Rifat*, a Lebanese national, entered South Africa illegally three months ago. He lives with two cousins at their crockery shop in downtown Johannesburg. Though he admits apprehension that he can be “caught any day”, chances of that are slim. With his white skin he blends in with the crowd and can pass for Greek.
Because of the difficult nature of tracking down illegal immigrants, the exact figures of illegal foreigners by country are unknown. One source, working with an international refugee rights body, said illegal immigrants from these countries may in some cases apply for asylum when they arrive in the country, when they might actually just be economic migrants. As a result, they secure documents enabling them to live and work in the country with relative ease.
According to a Department of Home Affairs official based at Lindela, the discrepancy between the numbers of blacks and “non-blacks” arrested for being illegal is simple to explain. “The minute they’re locked up, they call for their lawyers most of them can afford it,” he said.
Kamal Ebrahim’s striking green eyes and olive skin give him a slight Mediterranean appearance. The Iraqi national was arrested, found to be without papers and sent to Lindela, where he has spent the past month.
But he says he landed there quite by chance. Ebrahim, who entered South Africa illegally through Mozambique last year, says he has never experienced hostility from locals, not even from fellow hawkers in Johannesburg who are notoriously “turf-conscious” about where newcomers may or may not work.
Outsider status does, however, have its pitfalls, regardless of skin colour. An accomplished interior decorator by profession, Lutova has struggled to continue her career because, she says, she has either been told she is “too qualified” or, in somewhat nebulous terms, told she “lacks a South African education”. Favel’s problems are related to language. She’s a qualified primary school teacher but because she is not fluent in English education authorities say Favel’s only option is trying to find work as a Hebrew teacher at local religious schools.
In a study published in the Africa Insight journal last year researchers tried to determine whether skilled non-citizens were immune to the general hostility from locals, assumed to apply to all foreigners.
Though in small numbers, African respondents who reported negative relations with people from South Africa outweighed those of their counterparts from other countries. But on the whole it was found that the professional status of the respondents “shielded” them from harsh treatment meted out to ordinary workers, immigrants or refugees.
Xenophobia is one of the issues expected to be hotly debated at the World Conference against Racism in Durban next week.
* Not his real name