Denialism no answer to xenophobiaBy Imraan Buccus
Imagine if, in 2009, an armed white mob chanting racist slogans stormed a building known to house mostly black people and proceeded to hurl people to their deaths.
If local officials and politicians tried to deny that the motive had been racism and said that the mob was merely searching for criminals their denialism would, correctly, be seen as appeasement. There would, and rightly so, be massive national and international outrage as the appeasement of barbarism.
In May 2008 foreign-born Africans were attacked in Umbilo and hounded out of Cato Manor and Chatsworth. Local officials and politicians responded with the denialism that has often cursed the ruling elite. That denialism was, unquestionably, a form of appeasement. A social pathology cannot be confronted if it is not clearly named.
The obfuscation around the realities of the xenophobic attacks in Durban in May last year has allowed the disease of xenophobia to fester. Now it has returned in the most horrific way. And once again, the brutal reality that blatant and murderous xenophobia stains our city has been masked by denialism on the part of some local politicians and officials.
Every time a ward councillor or police officer says that the horrific recent attack on the refugee shelter in
was just an attack on criminals they are guilty of appeasement. The inexcusable cannot be excused.
But naming xenophobia for what it is will not be enough. We also need to understand how and why this disease festers in our society. Most of the responses to the many pogroms have manifestly failed in this regard. Indeed elite commentators often responded with the “analysis” that it was just an attack on the poor that revealed their expertise to amount to little more than typical middle-class prejudice towards the poor.
The reality is that xenophobia runs through all levels of our society and that, from the beginning of the democratic era, there have been huge levels of xenophobia in our society. It is also true that when the May pogroms happened some of the most effective and committed opposition, especially here in Durban, came from poor communities.
Xenophobia is not a disease of the poor – it is a disease of South Africa. There are rich xenophobes and poor xenophobes, xenophobes in mobs on the street and xenophobes working for the police or the Department of Homes Affairs.
An important attempt to theorise xenophobia in South Africa comes in the form of an excellent book by Michael Neocosmos, a respected political theorist. It was published in 2006 and is titled ‘Foreign Natives’ to ‘Native Foreigners’: Explaining Xenophobia in Post-Apartheid South Africa. Neocosmos gives a detailed history of how apartheid denied South African citizenship to Africans and attempted, via the Bantustan system, to turn African South Africans into foreigners in their own country. He also shows that the apartheid denial of citizenship to Africans was vigorously challenged by popular and democratic ideas of citizenship.
Neocosmos argues that radicalisation and democratisation of the popular resistance to apartheid in the late 1980s created a new and democratic conception of the nation based on the idea that South Africa belongs to all who live in it. This was a non-racial vision, which was also not narrowly nationalist in that it included migrant workers and others not born in South Africa. But Neocosmos argues that when the ANC was unbanned and popular democratic politics demobilised and subordinated to top down party structures there was a return to the exclusive power of the state to decide who is a citizen and who is not. Ordinary people, once agents of their own politics, were reduced to political passivity.
For Neocosmos the ruling elite “is unable to think beyond the confines of exclusion and control … Popular organisational and militant democratic struggles are no longer within its ambit of thought.” Once the state had regained the right to determine citizenship the post-apartheid state immediately began treating migrants in the most appalling ways and, also, used xenophobic discourse in the most reckless ways. Neocosmos shows that while politicians often spoke as if the phrase “illegal immigrant” meant the same thing as the word “criminal”, the fact is that 98% of people arrested on criminal charges in our country are citizens of our country.
If we take Neocosmos seriously it also becomes clear that, while NGOs have done a good job of documenting state and popular xenophobia, they have failed to take it on and will continue to be unable to directly confront it. This is because, while NGOs are very good at constructing people as victims and raising awareness about suffering, they have no power to confront oppression on their own. All they can do is to make appeals to the state but they have no way to force their agenda on the state.
If there is to be a real challenge to xenophobia it will come from a return to the popular modes of bottom up democratic politics that challenged the apartheid state in the Seventies and the Eighties. When these kinds of politics build solidarity between people who work the same jobs, live in the same places and so on, irrespective of race or country of origin, and when they do this outside of the logic of party politics which, with its emphasis on state conceptions of citizenship is inherently xenophobic, they can build an organic and powerful opposition to state and popular xenophobia.
But the great tragedy of the last few years is that the state has largely sought to repress the return to popular democratic politics. And NGOs have responded to the return to a bottom up grassroots politics organised outside of the logic of state conceptions of citizenship with similar anxiety.
If we are serious about defeating this cancer in our society we’ll have to acknowledge the importance of popular democratic politics organised outside of the narrow logic of party politics. We’ll have to return to a politics of popular solidarity.
During May 2008, 1433 persons were arrested on various counts in connection with the “xenophobic” attacks. Also, the then Justice Minister Brigitte Mabandla announced that special courts would be set up to expedite xenophobia-related cases. What has happened to these 1433 “alleged” perpetrators?
Lucas Mpetsheni and Patrick Jack, charged with housebreaking and theft, and Phillip Segabotla and Siphon Shabangu, charged with attempted murder, were remanded in custody until their appearance at the Fochville Magistrate’s Court;
Siphamandla Mdluli, Sthembeka Kemke, Dan Malebjoe, Vincent Madiseng and Lungile Myeni were charged with intimidation and housebreaking in Alexandra, Johannesburg, on May 15 2008. They were also remanded in custody after appearing in the Wynberg Magistrate’s Court; and
SAPS revealed in Dec 2008 that cases of “dozens of suspects” arrested over the violence and charged with various offences, including murder, were yet to make it to court.
I could find no reports of these nine persons or any one of the other 1 424 still being held in custody (highly unlikely) or having been put on trial, convicted or discharged.
Denialism? Maybe so. However, unless other facts exist, this matter can only be described as a criminal miscarriage of justice on the part of the SAPS and/or the relevant prosecuting authorities.
Your articles are excellent…… but too few and far between
It is no good Blaming Apartheid yet again.
One often wonders if these apologist are not inherently racist in that they must find an excuse for every African Action contrary to the world’s social Norms.
Neocosmos being the Blind African apologist he is, neglected to mention other important reasons why the Bantustans format was chosen. Nor does he give credit to that system.
For without the Bantustan system the Government of today would not have remotely functioning provinces. The post 1994 the Bantustan system in reality promoted inter-tribal harmony in the new South Africa when each tribe was able to have his “trusted” representative. The fact that they have deteriorated out of control is this governments doing.
The government of that time based the Bantustan and separation of “Tribes” on historical fact.
That of not “one African Tribe” could live with another or would be happy being governed by another.
There was enough written in history i.e. Southern African Pogrom of the 1800′s and SA police separation of “tribal” wars to support this belief.
However, if ignored in the context of euphoria of the time, what about the Xenophobia that existed in that the Zulu did not want a Xhosa government in Natal. This was not an apartheid thing but a long-standing xenophobic reality covering almost a 100 years?
My observation is that given fact that in each region of government today, the dominant “ tribe” has thus far been representative of the people of that region with a smattering of other tribal influence. That the vision and realisation of the past is being kept live and well.
Could it be that the Government of today applies that same apartheid system today but using Local loyal Cadre.
Another excellent post following your blue light brigade expose.
The only qualms I have with your writings is that you also refer to the term xenophobia, when in reality it should be called as it is – racism.
As a young Australian, I was one of many who protested against the Nationals hold of South Africa and their racist regime – but now all of what we protested for have gone to waste by the equally racist attitudes of the current government running the country.
Whilst I have many friends in South Africa, I have more in Zimbabwe, or should I say were there, but are now in South Africa – some of course did not make it out alive. The ones who did make it, including one family I am sponsoring to resettle here in Australia, really hate South Africans with some justification, because of their racist attitude to the family as “Zims”
I know – and fully understand the pressures of the millions of refugees flooding into SA, but as a person from the outside looking in, it is all of your own making, because it has been your political “gods” that have supported the monomaniacal racist murderer currently destroying what was once a beautiful country.
Will my thought be heard? – I doubt it because I am an Australian with no voice in the matter – but it is my friends that are being murdered off there – and suffering more in SA ….. and all you say is “we have to have an African solution…..”
The African solution of course is to kill off the opposition and get rich at the expense of everyone else….
My heart bleeds at the betrayal of all our efforts of our youth – my soul cries at the loss of my friends ….
Ditto the above Ozzer. Allowing for different families and I actually married one of those zims.
And let’s also include the determination of Boers as “foreign” settlers, and whites as not “african” despite being born in Africa.
This xenophobia of the ruling class has just legitimized the racist NP regime, and brought to nothing the struggle and sacrifice of millions.
Mbeki’s every policy has been anti-white racist. This undermined the Tutu and Mandela rainbow nation reconciliation and transformation program. The real danger of black/black racism grew during this splintering. It is much more dangerous, because blacks are the majority by far.
@ Alistair Budd
Sorry I have to make a slight change in what I wrote above your post …..
What I should have written was that I have many acquaintances in South Africa as well as a few friends. There is as you can well acknowledge, a very significant difference between the two.
However, my friends from Rhodesia and by extension now Zimbabwe, are friends, and without wanting to make too much of anything about it, they are both black – and white.
Two of the whites were Selous, one I met here in Oz and I discovered that his entire family had been butchered by terrs, so he did have a few problems adjusting. The other I met overseas on assignment and I am not all that sure where he got his passport from …….. but both were survivors.
One thing they had in common was that they both despised South Africans after they had been “sold out” for convenience and expediency.
It is from both of these friends that have formed my opinions of South Africans, because whilst blood is blood, it was friends like them I would trust at my back.
@ Brandon
Despite living in Australia, I sometimes think I now more about SA than many of the people there, because when you are outside, you can see both the forest – and the trees!
And while I would hesitate to legitimize the many evils the NP perpetrate on it’s own citizens, it is quite plain to see that the ANC is as evil, if not more so with their corruption and thefts – and their individual grabs for power.
It is my thinking that the Boers have more rights to land than some of the blacks other than the San Peoples – after all if the history of southerns Africa is not re-written to suit any one particular political agenda, who are the later invaders from the north able to justify their tenure of the lands.
Thanks for covering this troubling topic. You’ve done an excellent job in describing xenophobia in South African society, but did not explore the reasons for this xenophobia and what we could do to prevent it. Similar to the Obama speech on race, I look forward to another article from you on xenophobia in South Africa – a concept that was foreign to most South Africans until just a few years ago! Hmmm – maybe Zimbabwe has something to do with this? Maybe the negligence of the South African government in handling Mugabe underlies this tragedy? Yes, the chickens are indeed coming home to roost. How could we possibly turn away helpless families fleeing poverty and political oppression in Zimbabwe?
Nice one mate but very confusing to find solusion in it.It will be neive to claim tohave control or political nor religious solution to this topic.
IN south africa,Israel,Ruanda,Zimbambwe and other countries that you may think of.
This thing is not based on civilization or so.
But looking at the primary course you can see where does a problem lies?
Colonisation in africa led to many different nationalities to live together, but the problem is one has of course take a lead,who is suppose to lead the one who beleive he belongs to that region because otherwise there will be a conflict,
Economy, imigration from time to time mostly driven by economoic demand thab warslead to this.But when are the people suppose to decide to go backto their region as one region of course cannt be led by rainbow races,no one always take such a decision as fair to everyone, but people turn to employ political solution,religeous solution, to embrace the underlying truth, thus problem complecates,because one house cannt house multiracial kids at the end of day, to make a family one has righfully belong.
Thus in Ruanda we cannt provide a solution between tsutis and hutus because one has to take a lead, Shonas and Matebeles, Israelites and Palestinians,reality has to surface as everyone deserve leadership within his or her environment.