Xenophobia in South Africa: revisiting Tutu's handwriting on the wall?

Critical Arts, July, 2009 by John L. Kunda

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

This picture and the posturing of the policemen is apt in pinpointing the exact malaise of 'xenophobic attitudes' and inherent resentment amongst some members of South African communities. For some, it is not a strange sight as it lingers deep in the memories of collective violence experienced in apartheid South Africa. The positioning of the camera and angling of the shot covers not only the frames of horror but depicts a socio-political stance. The three-fold positioning of the police officers reveals committed disinterest, with a weird atmosphere of whether they are 'protecting' the continued torture of the victim to his mortal end, or shielding him from further assault by the perpetrators of this crime.

In crisis, in the spirit of ubuntu, people would have fought the odds to help a helpless victim. But depicted in this image, the flames of death paradoxically represent a protest sign for causes.

Considering this horror, a mixture of emotions rattle in my heart as it is not long ago that as a young boy, growing up in Lusaka in the 1980s, I could hear the singing of Nkosi sikelel' iAfrika amongst the (South African) freedom fighters in our Kaunda Square neighbourhoods. We lived with them as our own. My memories are vivid of some occasions when the neighbourhoods were bombed, as assaults targeted the ANC guerrilla fighters. No one was blamed, fought or exiled as a foreigner, for we stood united on the principle of greater love of brotherhood and sisterhood for the betterment of South Africans.

Without due romanticisation of the past, the dawn of a free South Africa sent waves of joy across the region, for at last the oracles of hope had been vindicated.

Today's violence against foreigners makes sad reading, sending ululations of pain as a nation once lauded as destined for maturity, violently descends towards the pangs of the grave. A nation, once promising a movement towards prosperity, is slowly crawling on its knees, begging for a share in the 'cake' baked on a long history of promises. Didn't Desmond Tutu send an oracle of prophecy on 23 November 2004 (BBC 2004) when he lambasted the Black Economic Empowerment programme for amassing wealth for already wealthy blacks, deeming it a recycling technique that circulates power and wealth within the same conduit? And, true to prophetic oracles, he said the phenomenon was 'building up much resentment which we may rue later'. Is not misdirected anger, arising from the fear of difference which is exacerbated by an existing threat of otherness and the seeming entrepreneurship of Somalis, Mozambicans, Zimbabweans, inter alia [without due neglect of other influencing factors], a handwriting on the wall?

'Gruelling, demeaning, dehumanising poverty', as experienced by millions of South Africans, was described as the biggest threat to the country's security ... 'We are sitting on a powder keg,' Tutu prophesied.

The prophet was not listened to--the prophecy went unheeded! As the brewing of anger and resentment continued, a renewal was being advanced in the name of the African Renaissance. The concept ornamented the courts of the elite and was offered to the hopeful poor as a panacea. The idea of the African Renaissance (1) has been (and still is) peddled in rhetorical fashion as a cosmetic measure hiding the deep wounds of unproductive social, economic and political engagement; fruitless in its pomposity to muscle change for the majority of South Africans living in desperate conditions. The African Renaissance, based on the principle of the inter-connectedness of forces of humanity (Moemeka 1998), can never be reduced to utopian idealism without respect for the bonds of connectedness that the South African government has to share with its people--black, white, Indian, or coloured.

This is based on the notion of John Mbiti's (1990) interpretation of Placide Tempels' classical idea of the ontology of the interconnectedness of life forces (Tempels 1959); 'I am because we are, and because we are, therefore I am' [Mbiti 1990: 108-109]. This 'we' is a 'we' of 'social', 'economic', 'political', 'racial', and 'foreigner' integration. A 'we' transcending national boundaries which are situated in a historicity of imperialism enforcing the otherness of ubuntu. It is not a 'we' of oratorical and pharisaic contumacy masquerading as an altruistic gesture of renewal. South Africa is a unique baby, but, unless we care for it properly, we will all be joining together in tears singing 'hamba kahle'[go in peace], (2) not in honourable salutation but in catastrophic grief for a baby we could have saved. Woe is me, a Zambian, a Bemba, with N'guni affinities, living in Durban; and yet I trust I am safe for I am living in Durban among brothers and sisters of similar ancestry.

Alas, I seize this opportunity to sit on the throne of prophets and add to the handwriting on the wall:

   Alas to you kings, for you have not listened to the cries of the
      poor; you have
   walked in elegance amongst a class of your own; oblivious to the
      suffering
   voices of the majority,
   Now you see, for your silent diplomacy is on your doorsteps,
   the thirst for the blood of foreigners will be dry, but wounds will
      remain,
   the anger and thirst for the crimson fountains of human blood will
      still spill, if
   not on foreigners then within;
   for Xhosa will rise on Zulu,
   Zulu on Venda,
   Sotho on Xhosa,
   Basothu on coloureds,
   Whites will watch and in silence lament, 'were we not better off in
      Egypt?'
   The signs of today will echo shivers as the blood that seems safe
      will soon spill;
   As a genocide lurks in hide-sight,
   In the absence of foreigners, pangas and machetes will swing on the
      closest
   difference;
   the neighbours we have for long known,