XENOPHOBIA AND RACISM - SQUID OR CALAMARI

XENOPHOBIA AND RACISM

SQUID OR CALAMARI

APARTHEID MAY BE DEAD BUT RACISM IS ALIVE AND WELL IN SOUTH AFRICA

Stes de Necker

When a squid swims in the sea it’s called squid. When it is harvested, it’s called chokka. When it lands on your plate it’s called calamari. 

Much the same with racism.  When it is used as an accusation it’s called racism. When it is used to justify racially motivated attacks on foreigners, it’s called xenophobia.

Poor governance, corruption and a lack of accountability are still reinforcing racial stereotypes in South Africa long after 1994.

Institutional racism has plunged black people into a perpetual victimhood, never taking accountability for their individual and country failures, forever blaming racism, apartheid and colonialism, and not being able to take control of their own destinies.

Despite a lack of directly comparable data, xenophobia in South Africa is perceived to have significantly increased after the installation of a democratic government in 1994.

The ANC government – in its attempts to overcome the divides of the past and build new forms of social cohesion... embarked on an aggressive and inclusive nation-building project. One unanticipated by-product of this project has been a growth in intolerance towards outsiders. Violence against foreign citizens and African refugees has become increasingly common and communities are divided by hostility and suspicion.

Xenophobia is the fear of that which is perceived to be foreign or strange. 

Xenophobia can manifest itself in many ways involving the relations and perceptions of an 'ingroup' towards an 'outgroup', including a fear of losing identity, suspicion of its activities, aggression, and desire to eliminate its presence to secure a presumed purity.

 Xenophobia can also be exhibited in the form of an "uncritical exaltation of another culture" in which a culture is ascribed "an unreal, stereotyped and exotic quality

Immigrants from Malawi, Zimbabwe and Mozambique living in the Alexandra township were physically assaulted over a period of several weeks in January 1995, as armed gangs identified suspected undocumented migrants and marched them to the police station in an attempt to 'clean' the township of foreigners.The campaign, known as "Buyelekhaya" (go back home), blamed foreigners for crime, unemployment and sexual attacks.

In September 1998 a Mozambican and two Senegalese were thrown out of a train. The assault was carried out by a group returning from a rally that blamed foreigners for unemployment, crime and spreading AIDS.

In 2000 seven foreigners were killed on the Cape Flats over a five-week period in what police described as xenophobic murders possibly motivated by the fear that outsiders would claim property belonging to locals.

In October 2001 residents of the Zandspruit informal settlement gave Zimbabweans 10 days to leave the area. When the foreigners failed to leave voluntarily they were forcefully evicted and their shacks were burned down and looted. Community members said they were angry that Zimbabweans were employed while locals remained jobless and blamed the foreigners for a number of crimes.

In the last week of 2005 and first week of 2006 at least four people, including two Zimbabweans, died in the Olievenhoutbosch settlement after foreigners were blamed for the death of a local man. Shacks belonging to foreigners were set alight and locals demanded that police remove all immigrants from the area.

In August 2006 Somali refugees appealed for protection after 21 Somali traders were killed in July of that year and 26 more in August. The immigrants believed the murders to be motivated by xenophobia, although police rejected the assertion of a concerted campaign to drive Somali traders out of townships in the Western Cape.

Attacks on foreign nationals increased markedly in late 2007 and it is believed that there were at least a dozen attacks between January and May 2008. The most severe incidents occurred on 8 January 2008 when two Somali shop owners were murdered in the Eastern Cape towns of Jeffreys Bay and East London and in March 2008 when seven people were killed including Zimbabweans, Pakistanis and a Somali after their shops and shacks were set alight in Atteridgeville near Pretoria.

On 12 May 2008 a series of riots started in the township of Alexandra (in the north-eastern part of Johannesburg) when locals attacked migrants from Mozambique, Malawi and Zimbabwe, killing two people and injuring 40 others. Some attackers were reported to have been singing Jacob Zuma's campaign song Umshini Wami (Zulu: "Bring Me My Machine Gun").

In the following weeks the violence spread, first to other settlements in the Gauteng Province, then to the coastal cities of Durban and Cape Town.

Attacks were also reported in parts of the Southern Cape, Mpumalanga, the North West and Free State.

 In late May 2009, reports emerged regarding a possible resurgence of xenophobic related activity and the organising of attacks in the Western Cape. Reports of threats and secret meetings by local businessmen surfaced in Gugulethu, Khayelitsha and Philippi, Cape Town.

Samora Machel in Philippi once again emerging as a flash-point. In Gugulethu, reports emerged of secret meetings by local businessmen discussing 'what to do about Somali shopkeepers'. The Anti-Eviction Campaign brought these issues to the open by organising a series of anti-xenophobia meetings attempting to find the root cause of the crisis.

In July 2012 there were new attacks in parts of Cape Town and in Botshabelo in the Free State.

On 30 May 2013, 25-year-old Abdi Nasir Mahmoud Good, was stoned to death. The violence was captured on a mobile phone and shared on the Internet.

Three Somali shopkeepers had been killed in June 2013 and the Somali government requested the South African authorities to do more to protect their nationals. Among those murdered were two brothers who were allegedly hacked to death. The attacks led to public outcry and worldwide protests by the Somali diaspora, in Cape Town, London and Minneapolis.

On 7 June 2014, a Somali national, in his 50s, was reportedly stoned to death and two others were seriously injured when the angry mob of locals attacked their shop in extension 6 late on Saturday. Three more Somalis were wounded from gunshots and shops were looted.

After another round of xenophobic violence against Somali entrepreneurs in April 2015, Somalia's government announced that it would evacuate its citizens from South Africa.

In April 2015, there was an upsurge in xenophobic attacks throughout the country. The attacks started in Durban and spread to Johannesburg. Zulu King Goodwill Zwelithini has been accused of fuelling the attacks by saying that foreigners should "go back to their countries".

Locals looted foreigners' shops and attacked immigrants in general, forcing hundreds to relocate to police stations across the country. The Malawian authorities subsequently began repatriating their nationals, and a number of other foreign governments also announced that they would evacuate their citizens.

In October 2015 there were sustained xenophobic attacks in Grahamstown in the Eastern Cape. It as reported than more than 500 people were displaced and more than 300 shops and homes looted and, in some cases, destroyed altogether

Notwithstanding all the so-called ‘reasons’ for the attacks, a report by the Human Sciences Research Council identified four broad causes for the violence:

Ø  relative deprivation, specifically intense competition for jobs, commodities and housing;

Ø  group processes, including psychological categorisation processes that are nationalistic rather than superordinate

Ø  South African exceptionalism, or a feeling of superiority in relation to other Africans; and

Ø  exclusive citizenship, or a form of nationalism that excludes others.

Prior to 1994, immigrants from elsewhere also faced discrimination and even violence in South Africa, though much of that risk stemmed from the institutionalised racism of the time due to apartheid.  After democratisation in 1994, contrary to expectations, the incidence of xenophobia increased considerably.

Centuries of colonialism, slavery and apartheid have left a legacy of institutional racism, where there is instinctive prejudice against people of different nationalities in societies across the globe.

In the US and South Africa, racism has infused the DNA of almost every institution and racist practices have in many ways become so part and parcel of habits and interaction that they are often not even recognised as such.

In South Africa, incidents of government corruption are interpreted by some whites as a failure by ALL  blacks.

Racism has a terrifying impact on individuals. The Institute for Peace and Justice in the US describes some aspects of racism as a “rejection or neglect as well as attack – a denial of needs, a reduction of persons to the status of objects to be broken, manipulated, or ignored. The violence of bombs can cripple bodies; the violence of miseducation can cripple minds. The violence of unemployment can murder self-esteem and hope. The violence of a chronic insecurity can disfigure personalities as well as persons.”

Institutionalised racism and apartheid have left black South Africans with massive “existential insecurity”. Chronic insecurity caused by humiliation that scared the sense of ‘self’. Slavery, colonialism and apartheid have caused a “dislocation” of “familiar and trusted social benchmarks”– whether cultural, individual or social. This leaves a void in many individuals. The challenge for South Africa is how to help broken individuals fill that void.

In our globalised world, self-esteem, identity and value are measured increasingly by possessions. This reinforces existential insecurity among poor blacks.

Some blacks tend to overcompensate for white racist attitudes: over asserting their “blackness”, seeing the world only in black and white, not in between or as a mosaic of different colours.

Many white South Africans appear to be ignorant of the continuing legacy of “white privilege”. Some argue that poor blacks are in their predicament because of their own doing.

Others say affirmative action is making blacks privileged. Yet others make fundamentalist calls for ‘merit appointments’ merely as guise to continue white privilege.

Some white South Africans have argued for “colour-blindness”, saying race does not matter. Yet, as the African-American psychologist Monnica Williams argues, “colour-blindness” has helped to make race a taboo topic that polite people cannot openly discuss.

And if you can’t talk about it, you can’t understand it, much less fix the racial problems that plague our society.

Without an open, honest and sober conversation about race in South Africa, we cannot understand the extent of the continuing legacy of racial segregation, and the policies needed to rectify it.

Racism has existed throughout human history. During the past 500-1000 years, racism on the part of Western powers toward non-Westerners has had a far more significant impact on history than any other form of racism (such as racism among Western groups or among Easterners, such as Asians, Africans, and others). The most notorious example of racism by the West has been slavery, particularly the enslavement of Africans in the New World (slavery itself dates back thousands of years). This enslavement was accomplished because of the racist belief that Black Africans were less fully human than white Europeans and their descendants.

The UN does not define "racism"; however, it does define "racial discrimination"

According to the United Nations International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination:

“the term "racial discrimination" shall mean any distinction, exclusion, restriction, or preference based on race, colour, descent, or national or ethnic origin that has the purpose or effect of nullifying or impairing the recognition, enjoyment or exercise, on an equal footing, of human rights and fundamental freedoms in the political, economic, social, cultural or any other field of public life.”

In South Africa, ‘Black racism’ is an invisible, weightless knapsack of special provisions, passports, visas and blank cheques that accrues benefits to a person purely for their political association.