From xenophobia to hospitality

From xenophobia to hospitality

Monday morning, about ten days ago; I went up from bed and saw the newspaper, on the front page a picture, I saw a glimpse of a burning body in the street. Instinctively I put the paper away. This was too much, I could not read it and that day I tried to forget what was inevitably happening in our country.

This is South Africa. Things happen that are very bad; you try to walk away from them, which you can do for a while, but not for long and not for good.

Living in a welfare state like Sweden is different. There life in a way is like constant putting aside bad things happening, in a permanent way, just as I did that Monday last week. In Sweden you may hide in welfare and presume that life after all is not so bad. You can in fact fool yourself for a long time, a whole life time.

In South Africa you cannot do that. Truth will catch up with you and to my surprise, again, that truth was ugly, terrible, unbelievably tragic, but more than that. The truth is that when something terribly bad happens, like the xenophobic outrage against Africans from neighbouring countries the last two weeks, when probably more than 50 of them have died, there is an upsurge of good coming from thousands of people who step in and do practical work. Had I persisted in not finding out what was happening in my own city I would have become sick, physically. Facing the tragedy was far better because then I was also faced with the enormous goodness of people.

South Africa has once and for all bid farewell to her innocence through the tragic events of the last few weeks. The man burning to his death in East Rand, Johannesburg was of the Shangaan people in Mozambique. His neighbours had however had enough. They thought that the people from other countries are the ones who take jobs and make life miserable on the whole for the poor South Africans. All live in shacks in this area where the brutal burning took place.

The leadership, including the President, which is no longer a leadership worth the name, blame these incidents on ‘criminal elements’, but the fact is that many thousands of more or less poor South Africans have threatened foreigners and made them to leave. As I am writing this more than 20 000 people from other parts of the continent are homeless and assembled in temporary camps here in Cape Town. Two weeks ago they were all living in Cape Town in poor housing yes, but they had a place called home. The need is unlimited and voluntary workers in their thousands are out there to help, many of whom are from various churches.

How could this happen? There may be at least three factors that contributed to this explosion of violence against foreigners, against ‘the other’. First there is the abject poverty and overcrowding in which millions of South Africans find themselves. The grand style work schemes that the government has scheduled repeatedly for the unemployed (labour intensive road construction and the like) have never taken off. The poor remain poor and their number is growing. The arrival of thousands of poor people from neighbouring countries has not made things any better. Tensions have been building for quite some time in the major urban areas of the country.

Secondly, the government has not done its job. There is no proper control over the land borders; they are porous and for example today there may be well over three million Zimbabweans in South Africa alone. People from the whole continent, not only the southern part, have come here to try their luck. The leader of the Inkatha Freedom Party, Mangosutho Buthelezi was for a time Minister of Home Affairs and he wanted to have stricter laws as to immigration in order to maintain some control. His wish was however never granted.

Thirdly, people’s mindset in South Africa is still marked by the recent history. The majority of blacks have never been close to a white person, even less been able to have a cup of tea with him/her at the same table. With the history that is South Africa’s people from the various groups are also reluctant to take the step ‘to the other side’. One may understand why a black person would be very reluctant to take such a step.

The legacy of race has formed racist attitudes that do not easily go away. The ugly creature that comes out of those mindsets formed during centuries, thanks to European settlers of various kinds, has indeed reared its head the last few weeks, now in a different and to some unexpected direction.

South Africa is the land of despair, of prejudice, of hatred, of racist attitudes, but is also the land of hope. I am partial I know, because I love this country, but I am more hopeful about South Africa than about Europe when it comes to these xenophobic attitudes. South Africa will not survive as a country if such attitudes take root, we have to change, and we have to be transformed. Europe may still think that it is an optional extra.

South Africa’s way forward is from xenophobia to hospitality. The people of Cape Town are presently, as I write this, giving proof of this.

Cape Town 2008-05-27