UPDATE: My friend Jo has just put together a moving video of the Cape Town situation, where things are still desperate and relief needed. If you are on facebook, watch it
here.
Man, SA is in a strange place. Crazy-
ness has been going on here lately - horrible xenophobic violence, looting, raping and killing. It started in Alex (
Jo'burg) two weeks ago, and reached Cape Town on Thursday. On Friday the air in CT was really tense, and we were worried about the safety of friends in the townships. Not fun at all! Jules and I had our farewell party on Friday night and it was hard for anyone to be really present knowing what was going on around us.
I’m sure people are trying to work out what went wrong and why SA (the 'rainbow nation') is so anti-foreigners. One of my surmises is that it is not really xenophobia, but systemic injustice. You can’t stand on people for so long without them getting angry. Scholars will talk about
Gini coefficients and economic policies and
crab-bucket syndrome, but, in plain talk, the poor had had enough of the poverty and unemployment levels here and were expressing their anger. (The interest rate hikes, huge food & petrol price increases and
Eskom woes all contributing) Unfortunately the scapegoats were fellow poor people, who just happen to be born North of our borders, and their manner of expression was violent and destructive.
So, South Africa erupted, and we had some of our darkest days since Apartheid. Although xenophobic violence is not new to SA, something somewhere has tripped, and this was on a different scale. My question though is - once we have patched up this eruption, will there be structural change and action from government and the ‘haves’ to ensure the root causes are dealt with, or will we just wait for the next crisis? And, if things don’t change, who will be the recipients of the anger this time? Will it be the real creators and benefactors of the status
quo - privileged whites? You and me?
I’
ve been offline for a bit (reasons to follow on the blog) so I followed these developments via word of mouth, radio and newspapers. Today I was able to scour the net and read some of the online and international commentary on what actually happened, and how multi-faceted the issues are. If you want a brief synopsis of what happened, here are three helpful articles with background, commentary and interviews:
M&G -
Hunted by gangs, migrants flee flames.
BBC -
Tensions erupt in city of promise. (
Joburg)
M&G -
Is this the end of the rainbow nation?And for those of us in SA, the problems
aren’t over. 45 000 displaced foreigners is not an easy task to deal with, nor are the sights and stories at the community centres and churches where those chased out are gathered. It is good to hear some stories of communities reaching out. I was especially glad to hear of the apology at
Masiphumelele, where the community has asked the foreigners to come back, and are going around returning the looted items. Maybe there is still some rainbow here in our nation, barely visible shining through the dark clouds?
