4. GUEST WORKERS AS POETS: INTERCULTURAL THEMES IN EARLY POETRY
4.1 Guest worker identity
In 1981, Franco Biondi and Rafik Schami published an article titled „Literatur der Betroffenheit‟ in which they compared the „cultural catastrophe‟ that migrant labourers from rural backgrounds faced in Germany, with that faced by victims of colonialism:
Die Gastarbeiter kommen meist aus südlichen Ländern, sie kommen aus ländlichen Gebieten und sind von der dortigen kulturellen Entwicklung geprägt. Sie kommen hierher und erleben einen Bruch, denn sie werden in eine festgefügte, auf einem anderen Stand der kulturellen Entwicklung sich befindende Kultur hineingeworfen. Dieser Bruch in der kulturellen Entwicklung ähnelt sehr der kulturellen Katastrophe, die die Kolonialvölker erlitten. (Biondi and Schami 1981: 124)
Culture shock compounds the Marxian concept of alienation derived from mass production work techniques. Karl Marx (1959 (1844) gives a detailed account of the alienation of the labourer from his work, from himself, from other people, from the products of his work as a result of the production process in industrialized capitalist countries. And although Marxist thinking tends to regard the working class as an international phenomenon, the migrant labourer experiences additional alienation from his cultural roots. The migrant labour system in South Africa not only recruited its mineworkers from the rural areas, but also from neighbouring countries (by 1993, 48 percent of mine labourers were not South African citizens.) (Rabe 2006: 72) Social and psychological alienation of the working class is a theme for the discussion of universal experiences versus contextual and historical particularities. This also applies to migrant workers in Germany and South Africa.
Fruttuoso Piccolo, an Italian migrant worker, whose work remained largely unknown, published a poem (Quoted in Rösch 1995: 84)24 depicting the life of migrant workers
24 In: Piccolo, F. 1985. Arlecchino “Gastarbeiter” Gedichte und Collagen. Hannover: Postcriptum
in the 1960s in Germany as they eked out an existence, staying in company-owned barracks:
Kopf, Arm, Hand
Augen auf Beine nach unten
Beleuchtung im Zimmer
Das Bett
ein Wandschrank und Gedanken.
Ich bin in Deutschland.
Piccolo‟s visual portrayal of the most basic elements of life is reflected in the sparseness of the language. The poem depicts the scarcity of a life in which migrant workers are reduced to their usefulness as human tools in the great machinery of German industrial production, and its inhumanity and anonymity. As described in the first two sections of the previous chapter, the German authorities had simply not considered the great impact of “importing” a human being, someone with a personal history, culture, language, mentality, etc. Being forced to reduce one‟s humanity to the ability to work efficiently has left many migrant workers with a deep sense of exploitation. In Marxist thought, working class consciousness was regarded as a product of the common experience of exploitation and of struggle against that exploitation. South Africa has a strong culture of working class organization; yet, single-sex hostels are still in existence in the gold mining industry. Many mineworkers regard the hostels as cheap accommodation, enabling them to save money. (Alexander 2006: 52, 72) Often, hostel dwellers were labelled „rurals‟ who are lacking in urban sophistication by the „urbanites‟, the youth in the surrounding townships. Shifting to English meant for the migrant worker that “the measure of freedom was no longer the degree to which one could think and act as a self-confident worker: it was the degree to which one was modern, urban and urbane.” (Chipkin 2007: 129, 147) Learning German may have had a similar significance for guest
workers in Germany, although, for them, language proficiency also played a significant role in managing every day life.25
In their 1981 article „Literatur der Betroffenheit‟, Biondi and Schami deliberately employed the term Gastarbeiter, not only to underline the irony of the word but also to carve out an identity and help create a sense of solidarity between those whose humanity was described only in terms of their labour. In his poem titled
„Veränderung‟, Chiellino (1984: 13) echoes this sense of reduction; in addition to the working environment, the bureaucracy reduces the foreigner to the validity of his documents.
ein Gastarbeiter besteht aus vier Teilen dem Ausländergesetz der Aufenthaltserlaubnis der Arbeitserlaubnis
und
einem Ausländer
„Guest workers‟ were invited to work and expected to return home when their contracts ended; this might be seen as advantageous insofar as they were supplied with the necessary documents to enable them to work in Germany. However, while valid documents improved their legal status, they did little to improve social relations with the hosts. And many migrant workers in Germany today lead an undocumented existence, which deepens the problems of exploitation and alienation. In South Africa, immigration officials and employers often subject illegal migrant workers from neighbouring countries to abuse.26 The working class environment appears to be at once the closest and furthest away from an intercultural utopia marked by assumptions of similarity and equality. Its grass root level interactions could ensure
25The pressure to learn German in order to manage every day necessities has diminished over the years with the growth of Turkish neighbourhoods in the cities and the increasing number of Turkish owned businesses. Proficiency in German is, however, still an absolute necessity for academic and
professional qualifications and generally access to job opportunities. The same is true for the role of English in South Africa.
26 Migrants abused by SA authorities. 2007. [online]. Mail & Guardian online. 1 March 2007.
solidarity and intercultural exchange, especially during times of resistance (strikes, etc.); on the other hand, their legal and economic status in society does little to encourage integration, not to mention the problem of xenophobia in the respective host societies (which is as likely to increase in times of hardship as is solidarity among workers). In May 2008, more than 60 people were killed in anti-immigrant violence in South Africa. One could argue that this violence was essentially a battle for resources among the poor. Violent attacks were, however, directed at immigrants from neighbouring countries, mainly at Zimbabweans and Mozambicans. Xenophobia played a significant role in this humanitarian crisis, as did the lack of a human rights approach to migration policy in South Africa, and the lack of recognition of the positive contribution migrants have made to South Africa‟s economic development.27