The idea of postapartheid South Africa
2.8. The new South Africa: ‘Suspended revolution’ and xenophobia
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Tomaselli, 2000: 10). Languages of the majority South Africans are Othered due to the international audience of the journals that they are publishing in. This is significant for many reasons. It reaffirms the argument that black people have never been part of the conversations in the media and in the academy, from the start, they have been closed out. When they joined the conversations, language closes them outside. The most important debates, especially in the English liberal universities like Rhodes, UCT, Wits and the University of Natal were between
“administrative vs. critical communication” research providing students with theoretical grounds to understand the alliance between the National Party government and sectors of academe and the media “to legitimate apartheid in its new “reformist” guise between 1979 and 1990” (De Beer and Tomaselli, 2000: 12). Over and above everything, theoretical influences at both English and Afrikaans universities were from European schools of thought. It was never a search for a South African theoretical idiom. In that blacks were closed out of the media and the academy, that search would have been futile and impossible.
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ANC anthem, Nkosi Sikelel’ iAfrika (God bless Africa), but also contains verses from the old Afrikaners’ anthem in both Afrikaans and English (2012: 303). This kind of independence was not a clean break with the painful past of colonialism and apartheid but incorporation and negotiation between cultures and sensibility that have been locked in bitter battles for 342 years since the arrival of Riebeeck in 1652. Here the protracted struggle against “the structural, economic, and social inequities caused by hundreds of years of white domination” was already showing (MacKinnon, 2012: 304). In the postcolonial and postapartheid period, black South Africans have had to put up with poverty, poor education, lack of proper housing and health care, and a culture of violence and crime. MacKinnon notes that the clear reminder of apartheid is that “whites still dominated most of the business world and particularly the best-paid upper levels of management and ownership […] Although there were an increasing number of affluent blacks, the wealth gap followed primarily racial lines, with a small number of whites owning most of the wealth while the vast majority of Africans struggled” (MacKinnon, 2012: 304). It is these inequalities that have been cited as part of the reasons of the violence among blacks, including xenophobia. ickel notes that in the years leading up to the democratic transition, and during the transition, the country was torn apart by internal conflict that “claimed the lives of some 20 000 people and left tens of thousands more internally displaced” (2015: 1 -2).
In most cases this violence degenerated into an ethnic conflict, especially in urban centres. Hickel points out that in Johannesburg the conflict pitted “Zulus against other African ethnic groups—
Xhosas, Sothos, and so on—leading the media to cast the pogroms as motivated by tribalism”
(2015: 2). However, Hickel notes that the epicentre of this conflict in KwaZulu-Natal, “gave the lie to that theory, for antagonists on both sides self-identified as Zulu” (2015: 2). There, the fault lines developed between the residents of planned urban townships, on the one hand, and migrant workers from rural Zululand who lived temporarily in adjacent settlements and labour hostels on the other. Township residents generally supported the African National Congress (ANC), which symbolized the vanguard of the popular struggle for democracy. However, most rural migrants generally identified with an organization known as Inkatha and formed vigilante militias to sabotage the revolution that was developing in the townships (Hickel, 2015: 2). Hickel notes that, for most of the black people in the KwaZulu-Natal area, there is a problem with the ANC’s version of democracy, which talks about rights and equality of people, which they see as against their
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values in that as much as they supported the ideals of racial equality and universal franchise “they questioned the underlying idea that all individuals are autonomous and ontologically equal — especially in relation to gender and kinship hierarchies” (2015: 2). In the urban centres those who migrated from rural areas to the city believe “ANC’s democracy, and the party’s platform of liberal rights, is “ruining” families and “killing” the country, causing misfortune on a massive scale that registers as declining marriage rates, rising unemployment, deepening poverty, and epidemic disease” (2015: 2).
As much as the persistence of the intra-black anti-black violence persists in the postcolonial and postapartheid era in South Africa is worrying, more troublesome are narratives in and out of South Africa that want to create the impression that xenophobia is a postapartheid phenomenon. Such narratives take the scourge of anti-black violence away from its colonial and apartheid roots and create the impression that because of the failures of corruption of the black governments, black South Africans have turned on fellow Africans who are migrants. MacKinnon, in an example of such a narrative argues that, “South Africans met the legacy of economic and social challenges of the recent past with both growing anxiety about domestic politics and the economy and by directing their frustrations at foreign immigrants” (2012: 344). This dehistoricised view is followed by another problematic statement that “people from across much of the southern part of the continent had long been attracted to South Africa” (MacKinnon, 2012: 344 – 345). This has the implications of hiding in plain sight the long history of migrant labour between the mines in Johannesburg and the colonial and apartheid system of getting this labour, in the process setting black person against another black person. In what seeks to alienate Black South African is the narrative that moralizes xenophobia arguing that Black Africans from other countries “made an essential contribution to the growth and development of South African society” (MacKinnon, 2012: 345).
To understand and contextualize xenophobia it is important to contextualize the life of black people in postapartheid South Africa, what others call the black living politics, and I call black African subjectivity. The inequalities and disparities in the quality of lives in the postcolony mean that the majority of black people live in poverty. The challenges in terms of accessing land, housing and employment means that a majority of these people are almost always criminalized.
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Chance speaks about “the criminalization of shack dwellers” (2018: 2). These are people who have no shelter or space that they can live in peaceful, but are always chased (criminalized) by authorities as a nuisance. The ‘no one is illegal’ politics that is emerging in migration spaces are very relevant even in this context as these people are criminalized. Chance notes that South Africa’s shack- dwelling population of about 5, 2 million roughly equals the populations of America’s largest city or Chicago and Boston combined (2018: 4). However, even though
“townships and shack settlements, while commemorated in liberation histories as heroic battlegrounds and shameful testaments to apartheid, have been recast in public discourse as
“slums,” earmarked for clearance or economic development” (Chance, 2018: 4). For the people
“living in so- called slums— largely poor, unemployed black urbanites— have been moved, often en masse, from visible public spaces in the city: they have been dispossessed of land, informal markets, and the streets” (Chance, 2018: 4). This is the “criminalization of popular forms of politics that were foundational to South Africa’s celebrated democratic transition” (Chance, 2018: 4).
These forms of politics refer to “street protests as well as everyday practices of community building, such as occupying land, constructing shacks, and illicitly connecting to water and energy infrastructure” (Chance, 2018: 4).
Chance argues living politics is “premised upon a collective self-identification of “the poor” that cuts across historically “African,” “Indian,” and “Coloured” (or mixed- race) communities. As governance is increasingly managed by a globalized private sector, living politics borrows practices of the liberation struggle, as well as from the powers invested in new technologies and the recently desegregated courts” (2018: 4). He points out that “protests by “the poor,” as I demonstrate, have arisen not merely in reaction to the failure of the state and corporations to provide basic infrastructure, but also to the management of so- called slum populations by means of forced evictions and police violence” (Chance, 2018: 4). This has meant that the “lines between
“the criminal” and “the political” have become blurred in public discourse and through these interactions, shack settlements and the state yet again have been set against each other” (Chance, 2018: 4). Historically, some townships such as Soweto are a result of what was criminalised as illegal occupation during the time of apartheid. For example, Alexandra, a township with a long history and once the home of Nelson Mandela, is known historically for its “famed history of struggle against the apartheid regime, its forced removals, labour extraction, and population influx
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control” (Chance, 2018: 10). For Chance, there is a link between living politics and xenophobia in that while other communities or social movements like SMI and Abahlali BaseMjondolo were galvanising collective anger over the persistence of apartheid arrangements, some unscrupulous individuals were galvanising the same anger against mainly African migrants. In 2008 there was a xenophobic outbreak and violence swept across townships and shack settlements as “ethnic and national minorities deemed “foreign” were beaten, slashed, doused in petrol and set on fire — and untold thousands were displaced. President Thabo Mbeki eventually called in the army, causing dramatic shootouts in townships and shack settlements, again, called ‘reminiscent of the 1980s’”
(Chance, 2018: 13). How this xenophobia panned out is such that “those besieged and those leading the pogroms often were neighbours and all were overwhelmingly poor. Migrants from other regions and asylum seeking refugees were certainly primary targets of the violence, but one third of the people killed— twenty- one out of sixty- two— were South African citizens. Comedian Chris Rock, who was touring South Africa at the time, quipped, “It’s not really black- on- black violence; it’s broke- on- broke violence.”” (Chance, 2018: 13 – 14).
During the xenophobic outbreaks, “those leading the pogroms subjected many South Africans to so called elbow tests in which a potential victim is asked to supply the obscure Zulu word for elbow. People married to foreigners, those who speak a different language from their neighbors, anyone with complexions deemed “too dark” were targeted, whether or not they were “foreign.”
Rather than rooting out non- Zulus— for not all who administered the tests are themselves Zulu, or even isiZulu speakers— the tests are about inscribing certain bodies with the taint of a racial or ethnic outsider” (Chance, 2018: 14). What was interesting is that, “Abahlali and many poor people’s activist networks across the country rushed to protect foreign migrants, organizing community watch groups and anti-xenophobic street protests. “The poor,” along with churches and aid organizations such as the Red Cross, have been at the forefront of the refugee relief efforts in South Africa since 2005. Making life viable in townships and shack settlements always has required sharing resources such as energy, water, and land. Thus, Abahlali members posted online press statements asserting that living politics, premised upon sustaining communities, was the inverse of a “politics of death,” which was defined by divisions among the poor on the basis of race, birthplace, or ethnicity. They added discrimination on the basis of gender and sexuality to this list of divisions” (Chance, 2018: 14).
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Chance (2018) notes that xenophobia goes beyond the hatred of foreigners, and beyond the scarcity of resources in settlements, but nothing about xenophobia in South Africa is, as a Time magazine headline claimed, “beyond racism.” Rather, xenophobia is racism, wrought from the messy apartheid past and postcolonial present. The “elbow tests” used in the 2008 pogroms are instructive. The South African police used them for years. On the basis of such “tests,” poor African migrants and refugees have been sent to the notorious Lindela repatriation centre, a place of well- documented neglect and abuse, where suspected “aliens” await an uncertain fate. In Kennedy Road, residents spoke of Lindela with hushed and fearful tones” (Chance, 2018: 14). The argument is that ““elbow tests” […] recall colonial- era “pencil tests” that apartheid officials used to decide a person’s race— and hence his ability to vote, to live, and to work in certain places—
in essence, his or her citizenship— by sticking a pencil in his hair. In its simplest form, if it stuck, he was black; if it did not, he was white. Under apartheid, black South Africans were treated as foreigners, down to the notorious passbooks and curfews in the cities” (Chance, 2018: 14). This is because “the election of Nelson Mandela in 1994 meant that claims to citizenship based on race, birthplace, and ethnicity were forever changed, but living politics captures how the struggle against a “politics of death” continues in historically race- based communities” (Chance, 2018: 14 – 15).
The geography of xenophobia in South Africa is mostly urban centres because most migrants move to urban centres in search of jobs and a better life. In the 2008 outbreak 62 people were killed, including South African citizens, and more than 700 were wounded, and many thousands were displaced from their homes (MacKinnon, 2012: 345). This has been a source of embarrassment as
“Nelson Mandela condemned the attacks and shamed his compatriots into remembering how they had suffered from similar prejudices under apartheid” (MacKinnon, 2012: 345). There has always been speculation that there is always a third hand behind the attacks. MacKinnon points out that this is because of some local leaders’ role “some political opponents claimed that various factions, including the ANC Youth League, Zuma’s supporters, and the Inkatha Freedom Party might have been responsible” (MacKinnon, 2012: 346). However, the most salient point is that postapartheid xenophobic outbreaks were an indication of “mounting frustrations within the country and the region” though unwelcome (MacKinnon, 2012: 346). It has become a struggle to really understand xenophobia in the postapartheid. The leadership in South Africa has always spoken about
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xenophobia as not afrophobia but crime. Postapartheid South Africa has been riddled with a lot of crime. Since the public feels that the government, through the police, have at times failed to deal with crime, they always have their own means of dealing with criminals. This has been called vigilantism. Smith defines vigilantism as marking that point when “citizens so often turned to solutions outside of the state to protect themselves. Although some of the means, like hiring private security companies, were legal, many were not” (2019: x). Citizens who attack foreigners, as shall be seen in analyzing stories on the anti-immigration march in Pretoria, argue that Black African Others in the country are here to take their jobs and commit crimes, selling drugs and building prostitution rings. Beyond Afrophobia, it is important to think about xenophobia, as some kind of illegal outside-state means of solving possible crime. Smith argues that vigilantism is located within the “larger processes of political, economic, and cultural circulation” and “it has deep historical roots” (2019: xi - xii). What is problematic, as Sitze reveals is the fact that, vigilantism is embedded in the popular consciousness in that in most townships if a criminal were caught in the community “it was more likely he would be beaten than turned over to police” (2013: 3 – 4).
Ordinary citizens have come to accept it as normal to discriminate and to behave in an untoward manner towards foreign Africans because they are taken as criminals. In the first place, it is always suspected that they are in the country illegal, and secondly, they may be involved in crime.
Vigilantism is “extrajudicial punishment” which means that people are tried by the public and they are almost always assumed guilty from the start. It has been argued that this is perplexing, coming after apartheid, considering that part of the liberation struggle in South Africa was for the administration of justice by a democratic state (Ellmann 1992; Abel 1995; Meierhenrich 2008).
Smith argues that “most accounts of vigilantism focus on state failure or civic failure, arguing that vigilantes step in for states that cannot provide order or emerge from societies where social bonds are fractured” (2019: 4). The fracturing or breaking of the social contract between the government and the citizens is a serious issue. Smith argues that the “assumption that vigilantism provides protection is dubious [as] citizens violate the law, even as they claim to be upholding it when punishing others” (2019: 4).
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