Where is Mandela's voice in SA attacks?

By: James N. Kariuki
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[ Posted On: 2008-06-17 ]

During the celebrations of the tenth anniversary of South African independence, Prof Ali Mazrui warned South Africans to be on guard.

"Just because you have been brutally victimised does not mean that you cannot become victimisers to others." Last month, South Africans indeed brutalised their kith-and-kin, the non-South African Africans.

Xenophobia is not new to SA. Anti-foreigner attacks have occurred previously; the Somali have complained about it for years. What is unprecedented is its intensity and scope.

South Africans have responded to the heightened violence by launching an animated campaign against xenophobia. Public figures have spoken out in its condemnation. So have non-governmental organisations and leaders.

The Human Rights Commission has been audible in condemning the heartless attacks. And notably, television has been using homegrown celebrities to drive home the message that xenophobia is unjustifiable and unacceptable.

But is all this ado too little too late? Will SA ever again reach the political and moral heights that it once commanded?

Clearly, the person to stem SA xenophobia was Nelson Mandela. Xenophobic undercurrent has consistently been sufficiently strong enough in post-apartheid SA to warrant his attention. Mandela's powerful image of a national moral force would surely have defused the scourge.

Granted, Mandela's is not sentimentally inclined towards continental affinities. But he is deeply mindful of how much the rest of Africa sacrificed for the liberation of his country. Additionally, he is a good and decent man. He would never countenance attacking the vulnerable and voiceless of the society, the so-called foreigners. Was it an oversight that Madiba never spoke out against xenophobia? Is he too frail to do so now?

Meanwhile, in SA, is it xenophobia, racism or Afrophobia? There is a story of a Nigerian who was once asked for his immigration papers in Johannesburg by a white policeman. He responded, 'what? I should be asking you for your papers!' Put in another way, the blatant fellow was asking the cop, 'Between you and me, who is a foreigner?'

Africans stigmatise each other

It is difficult to fathom a Chinese being called a foreigner in China, a European in Europe or a Japanese in Japan. Why do Africans stigmatise each other as foreigners? So long after apartheid are South Africans unwittingly still submitting to the curse of divide-and-rule?

Subtly but profoundly, the label 'foreigner' is derogatory. At the Johannesburg International Airport, immigration signs direct arriving travellers to exits for South Africans, Africans and 'others'. There are no signs for foreigners. Evidently somebody at Home Affairs Department was sensitive to the disparaging innuendos attached to the designation, foreigner.

Yet, the term is liberally used in the SA news media, especially since the recent upsurge of violence. Interestingly, in SA lexicon, that term is not applied to non-South Africans generally; it is reserved for non-South African Africans, the so-called 'these people from Africa.'

Westerners, Japanese, or Chinese are never foreigners. Even the African Diasporans are exempt from this label, especially the African-Americans. They are called visitors or tourists. There is a potent difference. A tourist is a welcome guest; a foreigner is an undesirable intruder. From that standpoint, it is indeed a small psychological jump from a 'foreigner' to an 'illegal immigrant.' Ultimately, the expressions foreigners and illegal immigrants become virtually interchangeable.

That mentality is manifest elsewhere. Lindela Deportation Center is where immigration offenders are collected before repatriation. You hardly ever see anything but Black faces at Lindela. Should you depict a white face, it is that of a criminal who has served time and is due to be deported for his sins.

Is it that non-blacks do not violate immigration laws in SA? There must be discrimination at the arrest level. Indeed suspicions abound that the police consciously avoid asking for immigration papers from non-blacks.

There was a painful irony last month to watch television images of the SA violence and observe that the anchorman was white and the on-the-scene reporters were mostly either whites or Indians.

Article Source: http://www.afroarticles.com/article-dashboard

About The Author: James N. Kariuki - is head of the African Diaspora Unit at the Africa Institute of South Africa in Pretoria.

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