Innocent violence: social exclusion, identity, and the press in an African democracy

Critical Arts, July, 2009 by David B. Coplan

Abstract

The violent attacks on African immigrants and refugees in marginal settlements surrounding South Africa's largest cities in May 2008 occasioned a rush of mostly well-intentioned attempts by journalists, public intellectuals, and government officials to discover the causes and find the cures for the outbreak. This article interrogates the glosses of 'xenophobia' and 'social deprivation' that were all too quickly applied to explain the attacks in public representations of this sorry episode in South Africa's post-apartheid history. The account of the focal events is based on a thorough sifting of press reports, victims', perpetrators', and police testimonies, government and civil society spokespersons' interventions, and field research. Rather than providing a monovocal, hierarchical argument for one or another analysis emerging from the reportage, this article juxtaposes complex and conflicting local accounts, justifications, forces, and circumstances, to provide an intriguing if ultimately--at this early stage--irresolvable image of these tragic events. The implications for South African social identities, institutions, and democratic order, however, are at the end all too clearly illuminated.

Keywords: ethnic violence, identity, nationalism, print media, South Africa

Introduction

That South African favourite, social exclusion, has recently raised its hydra heads above the invisibility of everyday interaction again, not just in its monstrous manifestations but also in its imaginaries, agendas, and representations. Unlike previous occasions since the transition to majority rule in 1994, this time it threatens the country's reputation and undermines its laboriously constructed status as an African democracy. For 14 days at the end of May 2008, roving mobs composed of the (mostly youngish and male) residents of some of South Africa's poorest and most marginalised 'communities' and settlements attacked African neighbours, based on their foreign (or thought to be or even wrongly imposed) identity. By the time the police, backed by the army, finally suppressed the mayhem and doused the fires, officially 342 shops had been looted, 213 of these had also been burnt, 143 shacks had been burnt of which 99 were also looted, 30 000 people had been displaced (25 000 in the economic hub, Gauteng Province), 65 people murdered (of whom 21 were South African citizens), thousands had been injured, and 1 384 suspects had been arrested. (1)

While the overseas press predictably screamed both in righteous condemnation and horrified fascination, local journalists and commentators did their best to respond responsibly, expressing shame and horror, condemning and urging an end to the violence, and attempting to illuminate the causes of the irruption within the limits of journalistic investigation. In Johannesburg this was as much the case, in different ways, of much-maligned black tabloids such as the Daily Sun as of 'mainstream' papers such as The Star, Sunday Independent, or Mail and Guardian. I shall have frequent cause to quote these commentaries as well as informants', perpetrators', and victims' eyewitness testimonies. Nevertheless, as the Daily Sun freely admitted, speaking in reality just as much for the 'mainstream' editors, the papers do tend to take the perspective most favoured by their readers. (2) Further, the pressure to provide 'authoritative' readings of the causes of the violence, if not recommendations for the cure, led the news media to accept rather too readily the most obvious social and 'pop' psychology glosses as necessary and sufficient explanations. Quick-and-dirty research initiatives subsequently undertaken by such agencies as the government's Human Sciences Research Council, or agents of the South African Police Service itself, provided more situational detail but surprisingly even less clarity, and served only to further muddy the swirling waters of debate. As a result, the tsunami of arguments, commentaries, and pronouncements about the 'tsunami' (a term much used locally at the time) of anti-foreign violence has left only a debris of assumptions, discourses, and pronouncements that conceal and deny rather than assuage a pervasive public uncertainty. In the backwash, on 17 July the conservative Centre for Development and Enterprise (CDE)

   called for South Africa's president to appoint an independent
   expert commission of inquiry, headed by a respected senior judge,
   to investigate the May 2008 violence. The term 'xenophobic
   violence' is now generally accepted as an accurate description of
   what happened in May 2008. Yet one third of those killed were South
   Africans. The May violence was almost certainly much more
   complicated than it initially seemed--causes of the violence run
   deeper than an alleged extraordinary South African hatred of
   foreigners. In order to penetrate the misinformation surrounding
   migration issues, bring the widest possible range of evidence to
   bear, give voice to individuals and communities involved, restore
   confidence here and abroad in the country's determination to
   address issues that threaten stability, South Africa needs an
   impartial, authoritative investigation. (3)