The wave of xenophobia sweeping the country is as embarrassing as it is mindboggling. Encouragingly, all our leaders in government and the opposition are united in their condemnation.
However, we all seem to be caught by surprise and are unable to offer any explanation for or solutions to a phenomenon that is sure to blot any image that President Thabo Mbeki has worked hard to build of South Africa being the leader of the cause of African renaissance on the continent.
It is clear the African renaissance remains a pipedream when South Africans kill and rape their African brothers and sisters purely for not being South Africans.
It again underlines the fact that Mbeki left his society behind as he traversed the continent signing peace deals. He failed to sell his pan-Africanism to his own people. It is at the moment best understood and debated by the elites meeting under the banner of the Native Club.
And his head-in-the-sand attitude towards Zimbabwe’s problems has served only to deflect those problems on to the poor. As, daily, thousands of Zimbabweans sneak through our porous borders, we can’t help but remember Mbeki’s mantra on Zimbabwe: “Crisis, what crisis?”
Frustrated by escalating costs of living and competition for houses and jobs, poor South Africans, mostly uneducated about the role that fellow Africans played in the South African liberation struggle, are picking on the easiest scapegoats among them — foreigners.
Many of the foreigners are, in any case, in the country illegally and remain vulnerable because they have no recourse to the government and law enforcement agencies. The majority of the illegal foreigners survive in the informal sectors and, as Cosatu secretary general Zwelinzima Vavi said this week, it is simply untrue that they are taking away jobs.
South Africans are a strange lot. We hero-worship celebrities and sports stars from across our borders — and still sing struggle songs about African stalwarts who fought off colonialism, such as Julius Nyerere, Samora Machel and Augustinho Neto. Yet we do not want their descendants in our backyard. Clearly much public awareness and education still has to happen.
But we need our authorities to act firmly to deal with the hooliganism and cruelty that characterise xenophobia. The police should use its network of informers to identify killers and rapists in our communities — those pretending to be politicians.
Local councillors should help police locate leaders who fan these flames and charge them with incitement. It should be back to basics.
The authorities should also deprive these anarchists of their gains. They should broker a solution that will allow the displaced foreigners back to their homes — in Alex or Diepsloot or Atteridgeville — and provide them with protection. To allow South Africans to occupy the homes of the displaced refugees would be to reward the violence.
The comment by Home Affairs Minister Nosiviwe Mapisa-Nqakula that her officials will not opportunistically arrest victims of xenophobia who are also illegals is a step in the right direction. Beyond that, she should think of naturalising them so that they, too, can proudly wave their South African identity documents.
A debating nation
The spirit of debate risks being lost in South Africa at a time when we need it most. The triumphal air of some politicians after the ANC’s watershed conference in Polokwane in December risks neutering the culture of openness that was promised in its wake.
It’s old news now that President Thabo Mbeki runs an opaque and elitist administration. That culture should limp off the political stage with the lame-duck president.
In its place we need to re-stake our place as a debating nation and the most important debate we need to have is economic.
In a country with such a massive income gap and with gnawing poverty leading to growing xenophobia, spiralling food prices and crippling interest rates, it is abundantly clear that economic policies need to be revisited.
Before the new populists in the ANC turf out the International Panel on Economic Growth’s recommendations we, as a nation, should all read and discuss them before dissing them as the work of foreigners who should just mind their own bloody business. Xenophobia does not happen only in Alexandra.
Eminently sensible, the panel slays many holy cows — from the essentialism of BEE to the restrictiveness of the labour laws — and offers interesting ideas. The focus of new economic policy should not be on political grand-standing or ideological sentimentality.
The focus must be only on ways of ending hunger and eradicating poverty by getting people into sustainable jobs and providing good state services.