Just as road rage is not primarily about the person at whom the rage is directed, so the current, or recent, spate of attacks against foreigners is not, I believe, primarily about hatred for these unfortunate migrants.
Road rage is a classic example of what is known in psychoanalysis as ‘projection’ — in this case the projection of one’s uncontrolled anger onto a person who is erroneously perceived as having done something that deserves one’s justified rage, which really derives from something completely different. The person who goes berserk in a fit of road rage may have been fired from his or her job, or be extremely stressed because of a breakdown in his or her marriage, or could be facing what seems like insurmountable financial difficulties. Then, when someone inadvertently swerves in one’s direction on the freeway, or fails to move out of the ‘fast lane’ when one wants to pass their car, or slams on brakes in front of you, necessitating some serious evasive action, this triggers the rage in question. But it is merely that — a ‘trigger’ of violent behaviour, which is more fundamentally connected with, and an expression of, the kind of stress, distress, or anxiety referred to above.
In a similar manner, I believe, the rage directed against foreign nationals really comes from a deep sense of discontentment, anxiety and distress, and is triggered by these people’s presence in so far as they metaphorically represent the true cause of the distress, which is economic.
When people — most of them apparently quite young — are unable to find a legitimate source of income in their own country, and as a result live lives bordering on destitution, the sight of foreign nationals making a living from selling goods at ‘their’ shops, among other things, easily provokes (that is, triggers) envy or resentment that manifests itself in violent attacks. But the true reason for the violence is not the presence of the foreigners; their presence as people who are apparently succeeding in generating an income is simply a stark reminder of the economic woes of the South Africans who ‘take out’ their economic misery on these people.
What could alleviate the economic misery of these South Africans? For one thing, I doubt whether they have the necessary skills to participate in the kind of economy that sets the norm today, namely one in which either various professional qualifications or the kind of skills required by the information society ensure that one has a job with a good income. In short, the mere, basic capacity to do a day’s manual, unskilled labour, is not what would get you a ‘good’ job in a globalized economy, which goes a long way towards explaining why so many South Africans are unemployed.
At the same time we live in a society where everything around one combines to create the impression that, to ‘be’ a person at all today, you have to surround yourself with the trappings of material success, such as a swanky car, Saville Row suits, the latest cellphone, hi-fi equipment, television sets and so on. A case in point is the billboard advertisement along the M1 in Johannesburg, which shows a young black businessman behind the wheel of the flagship Cadillac, with the caption: ‘The new measure of success’. Needless to say, when thousands of people see advertisements such as this one day after day, without any hope in hell of ever owning such a car, while at the same time being exhorted by the media to own it as if it is a real possibility for everyone, something’s got to give.
People identify with the images of role models, and such identification is not without consequences. Lacan points out that every process of identifying with an image of a certain kind is characterized by rivalry with the image, which really means by competition with what or whom the image represents. Moreover, he reminds one, such rivalry is invariably accompanied by aggression. In other words, when an unemployed person looks at an image like the one described above, and willy-nilly identifies with it because everything in the surrounding culture encourages one to desire such a way of life, it initiates a sense of rivalry — of ‘I want to be like him (or her)’ — even if it is at their cost. Small wonder that unemployed people who are constantly surrounded by images which valorize material wealth, manifest their desire for such a kind of life in the form of aggression towards those whom they experience (rightly or wrongly) as their rivals, in the present case, foreigners.
As long as this mindless glorification of material wealth as a self-justifying condition continues, similar incidents of violence are bound to occur in South Africa — if not as so-called xenophobic attacks, then as criminal violence (as I have argued in an earlier post, Violence in South Africa: A psychoanalytical perspective. To make people aware of the blindness and emptiness of the materialistic values being foisted on everyone in this country — in slavish imitation of the ‘American (Hollywood) way of life’ — is, let’s hope, already doing something towards preventing similar events from occurring (even if it is in the guise of planting a little seed in the minds of some who may read this, and who are in positions where they can influence policy decisions, or perhaps even some people in government).
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22 Responses to “Xenophobia and economics”
From their lofty towers, the wise wizards declare,
Upon the ways of those the sorrow they ne’re did share…
This is not about materialism, it’s about survival.
It is not about swanky Cadillac’s, which will soon become as much fossils as the fossil fuel which drives them, it’s about destitution and malnutrition.
It is not about an erring government, and the ‘interest’ it presumes to charge upon fiat currency they call ‘economics’ it’s about soil pails and contaminated water.
It is not about the “emptiness of materialistic values”; it’s about hypothermia and exploding paraffin stoves.
It’s about war and its wages, famine and disease
The sodden trenches of this war are the shacks of the forgotten, forsaken and dispossessed.
It is about what happens when a society starts to overshoot its resource base.
I think the article is well written and offers a glimpse into the mind of the “barbaric” persons we have been seeing on the telly for a while now. I do agree with the notion that the root of this evil is Economic. I feel the reason Perry disagrees witht he writer is simply because the writer did not touch on the broader issues surrounding the economics, but rather restricted his arguments to explaining the levers of projections in this case.
One of the main causes these xenophobia comes down to education as mentioned by the writer. What is even more worrying is that given 14yrs of freedom, the system is no better than what is was pre-democracy. Leaves me wondering for how much longer will the social ill of poor education ravage this place???
Notwithstanding that, l can only hope that for the voting South Africans, make every vote count. The myriad of problems experienced by this country are a real threat to the gains made in South Africa. A greater level of maturity ans accountability is now required by the office bearers for them to deal with the thorny issues. These same principals are also required by the electorate in order to raise the bar for the kind of politicians as a people we want. For South Africa continue on same trojectory, it is no longer sufficient to just accept what our leaders say, our collective intellect should prevail. It is no longer sufficient to vote for a black person just because he/ she is black but rather it should be about what the bring to the table.
So do you think it is about to happen in the US and in China also, where people similarly glorify material things? And are you very sure that the unemployed identify with the guy in the smart car rather than with the neighbour who makes a little bit of money from a home shop? It is that neighbour who gets attacked; not the driver. Not yet anyway. And if it is all about economics, what did you think of “Xenophobia: An evil excuse for laziness”, by Michael Gomo in this week’s M & G? Might he have identified a “pathology”, to which Ismail Lagardien is referring in his piece on “Isolated Incidents” on Thoughtleader?
This brings us back to the economic miracle that the government is so quick to brag about. The banks, retailers, motor dealers and government have conspired to create a mindset which says that vulgar conspicuous consumption is good.
Quite apart from the large numbers of consumers who are trapped in crippling debt, this serves as a constant reminder to the poor that their aspirations are unachievable. This is on top of all the ills that Perry so eloquently describes, and the overall brew is profoundly toxic.
Being poor is bad enough but having your face callously rubbed in it every day must cause massive anger.
I would recommend Michael Gomo’s article on ‘Zenophobia’ in today’s M&G. As a Zimbabwean who lived through the early years of ‘liberation’ in Zim he is witness both to the possibilities of well-conceived (and well-executed) government policies and the depredations of a power-drunk government run amuck. Although his portrayal of his contemporaries in Zim is no doubt more rosy than reality-based, he does make some very interesting observations on the differnces in mind-set and civil values of ordinary people in Zim and those he has encountered here. (He does not deal with the massacres in Matabeleland or the persecution of other ethnic minorities by Mugabe but his experience of growing up in a culture that required literacy and mass education are pertinent to the SA experience).
On materialism:
Compulsive consumerism and conspicuous consumption are no doubt destructive to the human soul but there is another, equally pernicious brand of materialism that I believe is at the heart of the present (non) crisis in this country. That is the materialism that treats political power, personal prestige and the privilege of office as more REAL than human beings! It is how Mugabe (and now Mbeki) won the war and lost the peace.
Cavalier disregard for the principles of constitutional law marks almost every aspect of the current president’s tenure. (Just for the record, I had high hopes for President Mbeki. His father Govan, old warrior that he was, overcame the twin handicaps of ideology and blind loyalty to comrades in order to embrace the values of a multi-cultural South Africa).
Indifference to –or even denial of–suffering that has been evidenced by successive ministers of health appointed by Mbeki (and some of their MEC counterparts); the lavish–and illegal–spending of money from the public purse by members of the cabinet; the everyday corruption of police, home affairs officials, council members, and security guards who are supposed to protect the populace; the pathological denialism that has led the president to ignore entire sectors of the population who are illiterate, technologically incompetent, and–as you rightly point out, Bert– largely unemployable in any job that requires more than minimal manual skills fairly screams out for opprobrium!
If one were cynical, one might conclude that the present leadership of the government–with the notable and laudable exception of the treasury–is determined to defeat many of the principles of the constitution. How else can one interpret the government’s repeated interference with civil servants who attempt to implement the policies they were appointed to uphold? This one pattern of behaviour alone bespeaks an attitude of executive entitlement that has been at the heart of every ministerial and departmental debacle from RDP housing to health care.
The problem is not that the president has been too ‘business-oriented’ but rather that he has not put equal effort into developing policies to improve the basic human circumstances of the least powerful segments of South AFrican society: the illiterate, the under-educated, the people who are suffering with HIV and their children (born and unborn). It is a failure of the president’s and the cabinet’s humanity that is at the heart of the current (non) crisis. It is the materialism of power-worship and assumption of privilege as a right that has marked and fatally marred the present government. The danger of the present state of lawlessness is that the government has been so unwilling to deal with the lawless in its own ranks that attempts to bring the raging mobs under the control of the law may lack credibility and prove inadequate to the task.
OK. Advertising and materialism are part of the mix, and so is immigration.
But poverty is the root cause without which none of the above are worth mentioning. Mbeki once said poverty causes AIDS and he was roundly criticised by much the same people who claim all in the government think this current debacle is a plot(see the current editorial).
Mbeki has made it his job to tackle the problem of poverty and has done rather well.(His lack of sympathy is chilling, but then it always has been.) But government is limited in this regard. In the end the only people who can solve the problem of poverty are the ones who have been making the profits; those with money. Even the the bootstraps thesis only works with money. South Africa is not poor. The wealthy in SA have always generated and continue to generate masses of poor people that they blame on the birth rate or the ANC or even gleefully both. Some idiots even see the current xenophobic rage as proof of the inadequacy of black people. Yet these poor black people are the people who voted in their millions for a government of reconciliation while the educated, cosseted whites by and large scrambled to look after their own interests.
There is no future for SA unless the middle class, with their money, education and influence identifies with their fellow South Africans, takes responsibility for the mess and makes this future happen. The blame they apportion to others is yet another regeneration of the idea of ‘other’ that lay at the foundation of Apartheid and thereby, yet again, the guilty are exposed.
it may not be as bad as you think. remember, it’s not the $200 a barrel that is the problem as much as the exchange rate.
if the fall of the dollar had kept pace with the rise of the price of oil, it wouldn’t have been as bad in the zone franc as it actually was. if we see 1.70 or 1.80 dollar/euro, then the zonc franc will simmer at pretty much the level it is now. there will be riots in non-zone-franc ecowas countries as well as in the east african community.
however, much of the currency issues in local african currencies are related to internal problems. the rand should be way less than 7 to the dollar, but between eskom and zimbabwe, it’s closer to 8. the metical should be in the high teens to the dollar for the same reason.
currencies that have gained on the dollar more than the euro has have seen low-to-moderate food inflation. that’s not coincidental.
it’s no accident that the worst food riots overall were in a place where the dollar is legal tender.
I’ve got a feeling we’ll argue and not get anywhere, the core of the matter is the kind of life described by Bert Olivier is the one that we are all living except a few “around the world” like him. The other thing it’s a global village we are living in and hollywood is just seconds with all the technology that seems to be improving daily and impacting on us like this, so what is it that can be done and will give a tough competition to the world of “today” that people of “today” will refrain from materialism and the quest to be at the top everyone?
it is very disaapointing to find that south africa is suffering from xenophobia. i suggest that zuma has influence in this issues coz zulu take it as this countrey is their only country. to solve this issues, zuma must not become a presidentnext year.
Yep, spot on. The problem is one of scarcity and its set to continue. Using the X word indiscriminately may not be such a good idea either, because we might be creating something that doesn’t exist to the extent that some believe it does.
“The wealthy in SA have always generated and continue to generate masses of poor people that they blame on the birth rate or the ANC or even gleefully both.”
I am trying to understand your argument but this pivotal sentence confuses me. Please enlighten me
I think that you might be surprised to learn that many of us (whites) would be very pleased to see the conditions of the poor being improved. What angers us is the manner in which the ANC wastes state resources when these funds could be used to help the poor. We do not need expensive arms deals, huge soccer stadiums, gautrains. We do need infrastructure for the poor such as clinics, schools, houses, transport, etc. Please consider that the taxes we pay are substantial and the so-called wealthy contribute as much as 35% of their income as direct taxes. Much of this money is being wasted.
JR - you did not understand my argument - read it again, and you’ll see that relevant work in psychoanalysis suggests that the resentment felt by the masses who see the unbridgeable gap between themselves and the iconic guy in the car ‘project’ this resentment on to the ‘foreigners’ who run shops, etc. And you cannot compare the US (where I have lived for years), with South Africa, where the material level of existence is very different from that in the USA for the large majority of people. And so far, China’s deeply rooted collectivist (public) mindset has prevented the same thing from happening there.
Mundundu - Thanks for sparing me the trouble of pointing out to Perry that he is actually confirming my argument, instead of opposing it.
Midafo - The reversion, on your part, to apartheid (in the historical sense) yet again as being somehow causally connected with this scenario, is rather lame, as is your generalization about whites being wealthy - there are by now MANY wealthy blacks in this country, too, as well as, proportionally speaking, MANY poor whites. Besides, why do you and others overlook the fact that many whites - including myself - opposed apartheid and fought it in many ways (I, and many of my white colleagues like Johan Degenaar and Andre du Toit, wrote against it and taught against it in our philosophy lectures). Don’t you think it is high time the old lines of separation were abandoned? We are supposed to live in a non-racial democracy (constitutionally), but factually social life here is more race-orientated than ever (one of the many areas where the ANC government has failed South Africans). The sooner we all judge people as people - members of the same species - and not as somehow irreducibly different kinds of beings, the better.
Siobhan - Thank you, once again, for amplifying what I have written in such an intelligent and informed manner. I especially like your elaboration on a different kind of materialism - the kind connected to power. The two types are intimately connected, of course, and the chronic blindness to the lot of other human beings (the less privileged) induced by power is unforgivable, especially in those who ‘claim’ to be public representatives. They have forgotten that true leaders are those who SERVE their constituencies selflessly.
Anton - Thank you for pointing out to MidaFo that many, if not most white South Africans would love to see the problem of poverty being addressed efficiently in SA - I fully agree that one would willingly pay taxes if one knew that some of it would go towards alleviating the plight of the poor. Far too little attention has been given to the creation of work projects with money from taxes - it is a myth that economies can only be stimulated by manipulating interest rates. To inject some of the large amounts in state (as opposed to governing party) coffers into the economy in an efficient, job-creating manner has always been a boost to the economy. I know people (white South Africans, ironically) who work with NGOs that struggle to get even those funds (millions, in some cases, earmarked for black community projects) out of the relevant government department, though.
>Mbeki has made it his job to tackle the problem of poverty and has done rather well.
SA had around 50% of population living below poverty line in 1994, and around 50% below poverty line today. For black South Africans, its about 60% living below poverty level.
By my way of reckoning, thats 0% improvement in 14 years.
To get an idea of REAL progress in poverty reduction, look at Indonesia, Malaysia, China and Vietnam. Each of these countries reduced poverty, as percentage of total population, by 35% over 25-30 years. Indonesia was a LOW INCOME developing country, and still managed to reduce poverty from 60% of pop to 15% of pop.
>In the end the only people who can solve the problem of poverty are the ones who have been making the profits; those with money.
The SA government is not poor. Just two projects, “Arms Deal” and Gautrain, will cost a total of around R100 Bn, that is one hundred thousand million Rand. That is truly an astronomical figure.
Less than 1% of this amount, would have enabled the government to raze hostels (which are unfit for humans) to the ground, and build modern human centered apartments.
Many of the the Xenophobia attacks were launched from hostels.
I find a lot of the anger also comes in when many South Africans feel that the foreigners take the jobs that they feel they were supposed to get, and many of these immmigrants are willing to work for much less than what they are willing. In a sense, I could understand their anger from that point of view. But this still does not give them the right to commit this violence. This seems to be the new apartheid.
I can go one better that the Cadillac ad you mention. Several months ago one of the French car manufacturers ran an ad with the tag line: “Cars for a Better Life”.
Pretty pathetic to have come up with that one, but even more pathetic to buy into it.
It is the glortification of material wealth amidst a sea of deprivation which is the primary cause of the rage that has recently manifested itself in the barbaric xenophobic violence.
It is the level of inequality and the wealth gap within a country which is the main contributor to high levels of violent crime rather than the absolute level of poverty.
So long as we continue with the current economic paradigm , the situation will only deteriorate as the effects of peak oil and other resource depletion hits.
Unfortunately we have a financial system that concentrates wealth and siphons it up from the working masses including the duped and debt-ridden middle classes into the hands of a powerful financial elite through the system of compound interest and fractional reserve banking.
I must also agree with you on the values that are being promoted by ads.
The media and the marketing industry all play a role in aggravating the sense of deprivation .However they are unwitting actors within the system, driven by competition for ever-diminishing profits.
We need a paradigm shift in economic thinking. We need monetary reform to an interest debt-free system that promotes co-operation, social capital, community building, sufficiency and sustainability.
What(financial system) we have now is one which creates scarcity, fosters competition, exponential growth, environmental destruction. It brings out the worst in human nature through fear (of scarcity), greed, resource wars and incalculable social evils.
Yaj - It’s good to know that there are still some sane people out there; most of the time I do not believe that there are sufficient numbers of us to prevent the ecological disaster towards which humans are, as Leonard Shlain puts it, ’shuffling like sleepwalkers’. What astonishes me, is the fact that most of those who comment on posts which are critical of mainstream capitalism, claim that capitalism has made society ‘wealthier’ than it was before, without stopping to think what ‘wealthier’ means. ‘Wealthier’ in what sense, and who is wealthier? A small percentage of the world’s people are ‘materially’ and financially wealthy, but the price paid by the others, as well as (especially) by natural ecosystems, is such that the net result is a ‘poorer’ world, not a wealthier one.
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Bert Olivier is Professor of Philosophy at Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University in Port Elizabeth, South Africa. He holds an MA and DPhil in philosophy, has held postdoctoral fellowships in philosophy at Yale University in the US on more than one occasion, and has held a research fellowship at the University of Wales, Cardiff.
At NMMU he teaches various sub-disciplines of philosophy, as well as film studies, media and architectural theory, and psychoanalytic theory. He has published widely in the philosophy of culture, art and architecture, cinema, music and literature, as well as the philosophy of science, epistemology, psychoanalytic, social, media and discourse theory. In 2004 he was awarded the Stals Prize for Philosophy by the South African Academy for Arts and Sciences, in 2005 he received the award of Top Researcher at NMMU for the period 1999 to 2004, in 2006 the award for Top Researcher in the Faculty of Arts at NMMU, and in 2008 and 2009 he was both Faculty of Arts Researcher of the Year, and NMMU Researcher of the Year.
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From their lofty towers, the wise wizards declare,
Upon the ways of those the sorrow they ne’re did share…
This is not about materialism, it’s about survival.
It is not about swanky Cadillac’s, which will soon become as much fossils as the fossil fuel which drives them, it’s about destitution and malnutrition.
It is not about an erring government, and the ‘interest’ it presumes to charge upon fiat currency they call ‘economics’ it’s about soil pails and contaminated water.
It is not about the “emptiness of materialistic values”; it’s about hypothermia and exploding paraffin stoves.
It’s about war and its wages, famine and disease
The sodden trenches of this war are the shacks of the forgotten, forsaken and dispossessed.
It is about what happens when a society starts to overshoot its resource base.
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