As we assess this most devastating week for the beloved country, it’s vital to first drop the language of “us” South Africans versus “them” foreigners.
A history born of migration and raised on migrant labour, the struggle against apartheid and a commitment to pan-Africanism — all these demand a more inclusive definition of who is a South African, of who belongs and who doesn’t.
Neither can this awful week be wished away as a story of “them” the mobs, versus “us” the peace-loving, inclusive South Africans.
We can march against xenophobia and violence, but it is a fool’s protest to march against “them”, for what’s happening is a reflection on us all.
Us, with our machetes, pangas and AKs. Us, with our broken bodies and our broken hearts. Us, with nowhere to go except a pavement or a church pew or a police yard.
Us, with our useless government first blaming an inchoate third force, then the IFP, then a criminal element and, most laughably, a hidden hand intent on destabilising the government ahead of the 2009 election. What moegoes lead us? Or don’t lead us, as this week has revealed.
Breakdown
What are the lessons from this flaming week? It showed a state flailing, and not only in the face of unexpected violence: we used to be an ungovernable people, now we are also ungoverned.
The politics of denial and of scapegoating was again on display. As with crime, Aids and Zimbabwe, President Thabo Mbeki refused to acknowledge the problem and buried himself in the sand once more. Then he got intellectual and appointed a panel to investigate the violence. Then he climbed on his plane and f*** off to Tanzania. Of all our highly paid, bling-life leaders, it was only Winnie Madikizela-Mandela (not even a government leader) who actually walked among the poor and extended a hand to the injured.
The rest came only on their own, highly stage-managed terms, and most, like Mbeki, did not come at all, but spoke from the ivory towers of office. Thank goodness almost none of them will be back after the next election.
The presidency, home affairs and the security ministries (including those responsible for intelligence and policing) failed miserably to detect the faultlines in vulnerable communities and to do something about it.
They didn’t need layers of spooks or massive budgets, merely an ear to the ground. Xenophobia and desperation have been evident for over a decade (in fact, they could have read the newspapers and studied the work of civil society) and as urbanisation has grown with its attendant underclass, it did not take rocket scientists to know we were sitting on a powder keg.
And when it exploded, serially poor decision-making meant the police were ill-equipped to deal with it. With the disbandment of the public order policing units, the cops didn’t know what to do, though we accept that some tried their utmost.
Borders like candyfloss
In 1994, as democracy came, so the apartheid fences came down too. South Africa, rightfully, found its place on the continent and immigrants flooded in, most notably from Zimbabwe and other regional states, but also from central Africa and the Horn.
Estimates suggest there may now be 10-million immigrants in the country, some here legally, but most illegally.
Home affairs has failed to implement a policy that would both exploit much-needed foreign skills and ensure border controls to ensure that South Africa receives only political refugees and the volume of unskilled migration that we can cope with.
A mid-sized economy with crippling unemployment and massive social deficits means that our country cannot afford to be home to all of Africa until development and employment take hold sufficiently to make real dents in poverty. This has not happened and it is the poorest urban squatter camps that bear the brunt of the competition for resources, be it a spot on which to pitch a tent, a communal tap or toilet or electricity connections. Such resources, however basic, are finite.
What should be done? Our northern border requires adequate control. At the moment it is like cutting through candyfloss to get through them and into the sprawls of Alex, Ramaphosaville, Jeppe, Hillbrow, Zimpilo and all the other places set alight in fury this week.
At an estimated population, including immigrants, of well more than 50-million people, we have to stopper the flood to a trickle. At the same time, the red tape must be untangled quickly to grant citizenship or integration rights to the immigrants who are here, so that they can get jobs and services.
The bigger lesson of the week is that 2009 presents an opportunity for a clean-out of a fairly useless Cabinet and the installation of a leadership with its ear to the ground and its eye on more nimble-footed governance.
* flew