Can South Africa rein in its deep-rooted xenophobia?

Officials marched alongside thousands of South Africans at a protest against anti-foreign attacks on Thursday. The government is trying both persuasion and a heavy hand to stem the violence of recent weeks.

|
Themba Hadebe/AP
Asian nationals hold placards reading "no to xenophobia" during a march in Johannesburg, South Africa, Thursday, April 23, 2015, protesting against recent attacks on immigrants that killed seven people. The protesters walked through the center of Johannesburg passing neighborhoods that are home to many immigrants, a large number of whom come from other African countries.

They came from a wide cross-section of South African society, from the chanting, green-and-gold clad cadres of the ruling African National Congress to dozens of representatives of Johannesburg's large Chinese community clutching anti-xenophobia posters.

Several thousand people gathered in the city Thursday afternoon, wielding signs with messages like “more xen, less phobia” and “we are all foreigners somewhere.” Leading government officials and trade unionists toted messages of tolerance and solidarity.

As violence against foreigners has spread in the cities of Durban and Johannesburg over the past three weeks, these government officials have wrestled with a highly divisive question: how best to snuff out the attacks before they get any worse. For now, that response – whether it comes in the form of pleading or punching – has mostly focused on the immediate goal of stopping further violence, rather than tackling the long-term causes.

At one end of the spectrum of reactions are the nationwide vigils, rallies, and peace marches — many of them government-backed. At the other are muscular nighttime police raids, where arrests are few but the message is clear: We are stronger than you are.

Just 12 hours before the Johannesburg peace march, for instance, police stormed a workers hostel in the township of Alexandra, north of the city, in a massive raid designed to locate weapons and contraband. They came flanked by troop carriers that disgorged armed soldiers onto the streets outside.

Though these images look like flashbacks to the apartheid era, the reasons for the raids and marches are singularly modern — to root out perpetrators and unite against the wave of xenophobic lootings and murder that have rocked South Africa since late March.

“Our main focus is … ensuring we reclaim safety and security for South Africans as well as other inhabitants of our country,” Police Commissioner Riah Phiyega told reporters at another raid late Tuesday night outside the gates of a workers’ hostel near downtown Johannesburg. “We are ensuring that we reclaim the space [from xenophobic criminals].”  

Split approach

As the marchers wound through Hillbrow, an immigrant-dense neighborhood of high-rises near the downtown, passersby leaned from balconies, waving the flags of their home countries and cheering their support. And in a strip of Ethiopian restaurants in the city center, patrons abandoned plates of injera and lentils to watch.

“What the government is doing now is good — late but good,” says Kedir Yaseen, an Ethiopian shopkeeper who has lived in South Africa for 11 years, noting that many shops in the area had closed for three days the previous week over fears of attacks by looters. “I think they are recognizing that if they kill us here, we will kill them in our countries, too, and if they loot our shops here, we’ll close their businesses in our countries, too. No country can stand alone — South Africa needs Africa.”

Many activists have argued that the government’s reaction — whether it is slinging anti-xenophobia slogans or breaking down doors — has been far more of a defense than an offense against the violence.

“The South African government … has long acted in a reactive manner instead of putting in place long-term solutions to address the issue of xenophobia,” says Blessing Vava, a Zimbabwean human rights activist and pundit. “If we fail to deal with this now once and for all, such things will continue to happen here.”

For now, however, the government says its focus is on finding the perpetrators of the attacks, which have seen at least seven people killed and hundreds of business destroyed.

Overnight Thursday, as dozens of police officers streamed into the Alexandra workers hostel, they splashed through fetid water pooled in the cracks of the pavement and charged inside, roughly demanding that residents open their doors. As inhabitants emerged bleary-eyed, many wearing only boxer shorts, the police rifled through their belongings, searching for contraband. In the end, they left with only several cases of beer — confiscated because their owners didn’t have a permit to sell alcohol — and a few bags of toiletries thought to have been stolen from nearby foreign-owned shops.

With searchlights from a helicopter overhead slicing open the darkness, resident Sipho Sibuso stood watching the police slowly retreat.

“It’s OK what they’re doing here, I don’t mind,” he says. “But we have a real problem here, so many people from Zimbabwe, Mozambique, Malawi. They’re coming to take jobs, it’s not all right.”

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

QR Code to Can South Africa rein in its deep-rooted xenophobia?
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/World/Africa/2015/0424/Can-South-Africa-rein-in-its-deep-rooted-xenophobia
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe