A new book looks at the root causes of the xenophobic attacks and their aftermath. The following is an extract by Rolf Maruping.
My parents came from Mozambique but I was born here in South Africa. I have spent my entire life here and all my friends are from here. I lost my mother in June 2004 and my father in October the same year.
They left me a stand in Makawuso and I was sustaining myself from the money tenants paid. I was too young to look for employment then but at least with the shacks I could survive. I tried to send myself to school for about one year but then I dropped out. I love music and singing hip-hop. I am looking forward to getting a sponsor so that I may create my own band and succeed in my dream.
When all this violence took place I was at work, where I repair radios and TVs. I returned to my place and found it in a chaotic state, as people were being attacked and trying to flee. It was dark. While I stood with friends outside my house, a group of about 12 youths came armed with knives, iron bars, hammers, spears and all sorts of weapons.
They said, “We want this guy who fixes radios and TVs” and they meant myself. I said, “I don’t know this guy you are talking about.” They found my shack locked and went their way. But then this other woman they met advised them that the person they were looking for was the one they had just left alone.
That’s when I jumped the fence and fled and joined the other people running away. We spent Sunday at the police station. On Monday I decided to go back to check my place and I was astonished to find it razed down. There was nothing remaining. They looted all my belongings and then removed the zinc sheets. There had been four shacks and they had looted all of them.
These guys who were the attackers moved as a group. There were nine people who came in the afternoon and had a meeting with the local committee. These people had regalia that they tied around their heads as a mark of identification. Without it you would be attacked. If you heard them shouting “Hey comrade” you had to return the greeting by the same “Hola comrade” and if you failed you would get attacked. They attacked you so that they could remove your shack and accommodate their relatives.
Before this violence, my friend Xolani and I worked with this white guy who had computers. At times he would drive us into the shacks. It appears that some people got jealous of this relationship and our progress and they shot my friend and he died. He had bought a flat in Germiston for keeping orphans so that they could get schooling.
But the people in the shacks do not want to see someone succeeding. Jealousy is a bad illness for shack dwellers. Instead of admiring what someone has done they would rather kill you for it. All of us get chances from God and at every point in our lives He has plans for us. I had a computer and sound mixers, and so these guys saw fit to disturb my progress by looting my assets and sending me off the settlement.
Not everyone is like that. There was this boy who was coming home in the afternoon during the violence and he met a group of Zulu youths who were on standby, waiting to pounce on such people.
When they attacked him, a lady who is also Zulu lay on top of the victim and said, “It will be better if you kill me but let this innocent boy go.” So they couldn’t continue. They said to him, “You tell your dad that we don’t want to see him here and he must leave.” The lady escorted the boy away and he was so grateful for the lady who saved his life.
After the violence I went to my employer and told him that I was going back home to Mozambique and needed money for one or two expenses. But he was not a good man. I expected this guy to understand my plight but he was not prepared to listen. He paid me wages worth one week and withheld the rest that he owed me. He knew that due to the displacement I could not report him because the police were too occupied to attend to my case.
I did think of going back to Mozambique but I am staying with a lady, a South African, and I could not just let her go like that. She is pregnant. My fiancée was also ejected from the shacks — they told her to follow her Shangaan man. Another man told me that they came to evict his lady from the shacks. They wanted to hack off the head of their nine-month-old baby. The lady cried until they ordered her to follow her Shangaan boyfriend. It was hard that day. I did not expect such a thing to happen.
During the violence, the police were uncooperative. My aunt phoned them and requested them to assist her with an escort as she had kids. They told her that they could not assist her and then a white guy came to the rescue and left her at the station. She lost a very big home and she has no other home as she had relocated from Mozambique. The neighbours took everything and even used her material to extend their place on to hers. They are even using her pots and pans.
It is hard to believe that it was the people we know who attacked us and not strangers.
The man who was burnt: what happened is that he went to the police and asked them to assist him after he had been chased from his place by attackers. The police just said, “Go back, we are behind you and we will find you still on the way.” How can you say that to somebody seeking your help?
The attackers waited for him and when they realised that he was not under police escort they captured him just as he left the station, tied him up, poured paraffin on his body and set him alight. The police did nothing.
This is a small area and the police could have stopped this well before it spread. How could this violence have spread from Pretoria up to this end when we had the police equipped with cars and everything? So it surprises us as to why the attackers in Makawuso were not caught even up to today. Even right now the police are arresting people and they don’t care if you explain that you are from the shelters. They are trying to force people to pay them the little that they have in bribes. It’s lucky if you get away without paying but they will punish you by dropping you off far from your place.
I made a decision and said it’s better for me to suffer here to see how this may end. I have never been to Mozambique for long because I was born here in South Africa and I don’t know anything about home. Where would I start? But here I still have hope that one of these days I will find someone who will be willing to assist me so that I may develop my music talent. But it is difficult. Since my parents are late the entire family is looking up to me for help. There are children who have now dropped out of school because I cannot pay.
I have now forgiven the perpetrators though initially I was very cross with what they did. Even if we can be sent back to the shacks it will be difficult to cohabit again. When I meet a person on the road there won’t be any trust because you will now know to which ethnic group you belong.
You see, with this kind of behaviour they are sending wrong information to the generation of our kids. You now hear someone shouting “Vimba iShangane“, catch the Shangaan. You look at the person and discover it’s a very small kid. How would you feel?
There is no doubt that the way in which we treat the stranger reflects our humanity; whether that stranger be from another country or whether those strangers be strange because they are poor is beside the point. If we are going to survive as a human race we are going to have to reassess our fundamental value system. — From the foreword by Bishop Paul Verryn
Go Home or Die Here: Violence, Xenophobia and the Reinvention of Difference in South Africa, edited by Shireen Hassim, Tawana Kupe and Eric Worby (Wits University Press), brings together contributions by a range of scholars based at Wits University who have been working to comprehend the contexts, causes and consequences of xenophobia. Illustrated in colour by The Times photographer Alon Skuy, it is based on a colloquium held less than a month after the violence erupted.
Rolf Maruping’s story was recorded by Phefumula Nyoni as part of the Wits Forced Migration Studies Programme’s Documenting Experiences of Xenophobic Violence Study