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Africa Day (May 25th) approaches in the wings. But if anything, the recent xenophobia attacks have come to show, if it was ever in the realm of doubt, that the South African citizenry is not as pan-Africanist in its outlook as it would like to believe.
Let’s go further: not only do the incidents hold up a mirror to us as a population, but the lacklustre response (and even alleged endorsement) on the part of the government has also shown us the degree to which the state itself is characterised by a lack of mechanisms or even a willingness to improve life for the rest of the continent – despite, of course, rhetoric to the contrary.
Looking at South Africa with such a pair of lenses will show the trend which has been laid not just by South Africans, but by South Africa itself.
Though the country may never be placed along Hitler’s Germany in terms of hostility to perceived ‘foreigners’, it does, maybe a-la-America in the wake of Homeland Security (or even inquisitionist Spain) partake in an institutionalised xenophobia. Even if not overtly, most of our policy towards Africa and Africans in South Africa is motivated by a kind of hostility to them in particular.
How it may have come about can be debated, but some part of it may be rooted in a serious case of covert sense of exceptionality. That we are not like them, and they are not like us, a kind of othering and indifference when it comes to Africans and the multitude of dilemmas, not of their own doing, they find themselves in.
An image which sent the country into a state of shock (which died away, as such things usually do) is the viral video which showed, in no uncertain terms, South African Police Service officials dragging a taxi driver whose country of origin happened to be Mozambique.
That the men who committed such an act saw it befitting to do such a thing while draped in uniform and the country’s insignia is perhaps symbolic of a South Africa which acts according to the dictates of the moment than one which is a benefactor to the Continent at large. The country has, time and time again, been uniquely placed to act on behalf of Africans and decided not to.
This posture can be traced as further back as the Mandela era, the highpoint of the moral self-understanding which the country has come to see itself as the incarnation of Ken Saro-Wiwa, the famed Nigerian minority rights activist whose death at the hands of his government and the gaze of the world, remains one of the first blots on South Africa’s African citizens’ advancement and security provision record.
A newly-elected Mandela declared, to the amazement of many, upon the arrest and mockery trial of Ken Saro-Wiwa: "I do not think, from my own point of view, I can call for sanctions at this stage. If persuasion does not succeed, it will be time to consider other options."
In the eyes of many, after only 19 months in which it seemed he could do wrong, it was probably inevitable that South African President Nelson Mandela would suffer a lapse in judgment some time, but the pattern has repeated itself and has become wedded to South Africa’s way of doing things in its relation to Africa.
For when in the UN Security Council between 2007 and 2008, South Africa controversially opposed (in league with Russia and China) the condemnation of human rights abuses in Zimbabwe.
This, along with an official silence over the status of the elections in Zimbabwe has been another point of criticism.
President Mbeki was notoriously detached from what was by all accounts a denial of the most basic and defining characteristic of any democracy – a people’s right to choose those who are to rule over them for the next handful of years; a right that all South Africans are, if not of anything else, sure of being in possession of.
And ultimately, this can be likened to the American sentiment which, amongst others, justifies torture in the name of the War on Terror; that what applies at home does not apply to them and that the general order of things demands that we do not act with their welfare in mind – that such sentimentality has no place in the formulation of policy; as if to say non-South African Africans are not deserving of the freedom bestowed upon their South African counterpart.
Many a times, the African Union’s codification of the sovereignty of African states has been echoed as the justification for a lack of intervention when it could have been instigated. This attitude rests on no other principle if not the “somebody else’s problem” perception of some of the issues that have rendered Africans hopelessly, desperately in the backwash. Though a clear geopolitical fact is that what is bad for Africa is bad for South Africa – and such a fact calls for the fenestration of the ‘KEEP OUT’ sign behind which hide dictators and tormenters of man.
With regards to Boko Haram, the would-be continental leader has been particularly sedentary. Apart from issuing a backhanded criticism of the #BringBackOurGirls effort upon Nigeria’s recalling of its Acting High Commissioner to South Africa (possibly due to the government’s slowness in dealing with xenophobia), no other statements of note have been made with regards to the search for the kidnapped youngsters.
As a matter of fact, when it was established earlier this year that South Africans had been spotted in that country (possibly lending military support to that country’s government in its effort to stifle the outlaws), the Defence Ministry told the BBC that anyone suspected of fighting against the Muslim fundamentalists in Nigeria would be under police investigation.
On the death of one of these South African “mercenaries” (as they are called), the government acknowledged the death and brought forward the formal “we are disturbed by the death of this one person” to the New York Times. But added a statement which solidifies the shocking indifference: “unfortunately, they went to Nigeria in their own personal capacity. We’d like to advise that this would serve as a warning to others who are considering engaging in such activities to really think twice and consider the repercussions.”
The Department of International Relations and Co-operation in particular voiced its “disappointment” on these men whose crime (yes, constitutionally) is lending a hand on a people seeking safety and security and a life free of arbitrary torment. Meanwhile Chad, Niger, and Cameroon had been working with the Nigerian army to recapture towns and villages that had fallen to the group in the country’s north-east.
For a country which has stated, time and time again, that it owes its freedoms and gains to the sacrifices made by their so-called African brethren we have had a poor track-record in instigating mutual gains and reciprocity.
When so much of the continent’s success hinges on the continent’s capacity put forward a united front, South Africa’s assuming of the leadership position would be more than decisive. But the hubris unto which we have inundated ourselves, the sense of exceptionalism, of thinking that we are in a different landmass and therefore insulated from the plagues of Africa, has come to foster an inertia in the part of the policymakers; it takes the loss of lives, in their tens or hundreds or more for even a statement to come out; even more for action to be instigated (and even then, much is left to be desired). What may that be called if not an institutionalised form of xenophobia?
Bhaso Ndzendze is an undergraduate student at the University of the Witwatersrand and the author of Africa: the Continent we Construct and The Symbolic Napoleon.
E-mail: bhaso@bhaso.net
