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

Critical Arts, July, 2009 by David B. Coplan

Facilitating this 'unfair' competition, in the minds of the attackers, is corruption in provincial housing departments that allows foreigners to buy or be allocated low-cost houses meant for citizens. It may be the case that working for substandard wages, renting or buying accommodation from locals, starting an informal shop or street trading, or even contracting a relationship with a local woman are not exactly crimes, but local men believe that foreign identity is cause enough to exclude their neighbours from such opportunities. This is so even though renting or selling publicly subsidised housing, which is illegal, is the one capital resource that may be available to residents in marginalised settlements. Overall, housing is a vital area of conflict potential, particularly in informal settlement areas, and one of the most consistent causes of friction in South African society. Julian Baskin, Director of the Alexandra Renewal Project, observed that due to enforced transience, the survival strategies of the poor do not mesh well with permanent home ownership. Many of those who are actually given houses have no choice but to return to informal quarters. In Alexandra, 400 000 people live in a square kilometre of shacks. Of these, 15 per cent are foreigners. Yet, the violence was in many cases about appropriating a government-built 'RDP' house, not chasing out foreigners, even if the house was wanted not for living, but for selling or renting. (23)

In reality foreign Africans, whether or not they are legal residents, do not receive any services, create their own employment, and bring a considerable amount of entrepreneurial and consumer capital into the country. Still, their long experience in building up a 'migrant economy' within which they can operate in any receiving country provides them with apparent 'benefits' that their South African neighbours resent their having. Black South Africans cannot participate in a multi-sited migrant trading economy, because they have no history of local markets or petty trading and do not have networks of South African nationals assisting them from bases in other countries. Impoverished black South Africans regard the country's own 'First World' economic sector as their landscape of opportunity, and in any case do not have the means to gain admittance to Europe and North America.

Government or politics?

Testimony in the press from victims, perpetrators, police, and non-governmental organisations places the bulk of the responsibility for the recent violence on the doorstep of government. Local government has been--if possible--even more unresponsive than national departments to the needs of the marginalised. Settlements that recently experienced 'xenophobic' violence have also been the site of violence and protest around other issues, most notably service delivery. (24) Many foreigners, who had no economic option but to report to work, were among the 55 security guards killed by their fellow workers in the private security strike in 2006. (25) The Alexandra Renewal Project has not renewed very much, except the bank balances of officials and contractors. When the violence erupted in May, local councillors headed for safety, lest the real culprits be identified by the mobs, with precious few attempts made at communication or engagement with locals around the violence and its underlying causes. (26) The reality in South Africa, however, is that networks are more often vectors of social action than formal institutions. Here is where we might find answers to the questions as to why the attacks did not spread far more widely, were confined to the major cities, and ended as quickly and suddenly as they began. Attacks did not happen where local community leadership acted to prevent it, as in the townships of Soweto in Johannesburg, and Khutsong on the far West Rand. Local 'grassroots' community organisation and informal leadership, it appears, are more often the locus of power and influence than are government officials. Local councillors were not targeted in May 2008, perhaps because they were seen as simply irrelevant.