Editorial
What now?
    by Aisha Lorgat

I am an African.

These wonderful, inspiring words were said by Thabo Mbeki when our constitution was adopted in 1996. But after more than two weeks of extreme violence perpetrated against some of the most vulnerable people in our society, the words of Mbeki's famous speech sound increasingly hollow:

I have seen what happens when one person has superiority of force over another, when the stronger appropriate to themselves the prerogative even to annul the injunction that God created all men and women in His image.

Now we have all seen it, here and abroad, emblazoned like a shameful scarlet letter in media images and news feeds that are strikingly similar to the beginnings of the Rwandan genocide. Horrifying images of necklacing, the punishment meted out in township justice during apartheid that everyone, we certainly, assumed had no place in the new South Africa, return to haunt our collective consciousness again. The crime this time however, was not being an informant or askari, but that the man burning to appease the blood lust of the mob had committed the truly despicable crime of being born north of the Limpopo.

Now as the dust settles and the blood is washed off the streets and our leaders finally deign to act, or at least speak out against the violence, how do we as a country and as individual communities move forward?

Do we attempt to reintegrate the 'other' in our midst again? Do we send them home? Do we create refugee camps to house the continents displaced people who have nowhere else to go?

 
The last option thankfully, is not being seriously considered by national government. The second has also been vetoed, with a moratorium being placed on deportations until the crisis is over (ironic isn't it? Our government does have a sense of humour after all). Of course if they choose to leave themselves, we won't stand in their way.

 
So that leaves the first option. Except, it obviously hasn't worked before. So, what is going to change this time around? It seems some of the victims were South African citizens (and we are not referring to the South Africans from minority ethnic groups that were killed or attacked, although this is an aspect of the violence that must be given attention as well), people who had been in the country for years, enjoyed reportedly good relations with their neighbours and were contributing members of society. Yet, despite this, when foreigners were targeted, they were identified as such and punished accordingly.

The common explanations for the eruption of violence, ranging from frustrations over poor service delivery and lack of jobs to criminal instigation and that old monster-in-the-cupboard, a 'third force', don't provide an adequate explanation nor do they provide a solution to this difficulty. Certainly, meeting the needs of economically depressed and the increasingly marginalised poor in the country would go a long way to appeasing the anger that has erupted. But the extreme antagonism and hatred being expressed towards people born outside our borders will remain, hidden beneath the surface, until the next time a crisis emerges and the easiest scapegoats are the unwanted foreigners among us.

So what now? The answer to this question is unlikely to be easy and pain-free. It also means that all levels of society need to be part of this answer.

Our government, whose response to the unfolding crisis has so far been little more than a catalogue of disastrous failures, has a duty to firstly ensure that there is an impartial investigation into the initial events that led to the first eruptions in Alexandra. Since the neutering of the Scorpions, perhaps the only effective agency that can undertake such an investigation is an international body such as Interpol. Such a step is necessary to provide intelligence that will help prevent a similar occurrence in the future.

Secondly, our leaders in government (and other members of the ruling elite), at all levels, need to bridge the growing gulf between themselves and ordinary citizens. Separating themselves from the people they are meant to serve because of security concerns and protocol only serves to make government less responsive to and aware of the needs and struggles of the governed.

Government also needs to urgently address the lack of a migration policy framework as pointed out by Mamphele Ramphele recently. This has to be tied to a wide ranging awareness campaign, championed by government and the private sector, of the benefits that foreigners bring to South African society and our economy.

Finally, we, the masses, need to scream out our condemnation of brutal, barbaric acts against our fellow human beings (who, until two weeks ago, were our neighbours and community members), and make it clear that these acts cannot be done in our name. We also, each and every one of us, must examine ourselves, look in the mirror without artifice, and acknowledge and deal with our own racism and prejudices - the little or large ways in which all of us define others as less human than ourselves.

 
All of us in South Africa need to decide if we are indeed 'African' at all. The fractured schizophrenic identity games we play with ourselves and others are becoming extremely damaging. If South Africa is indeed part of Africa then we need to commit ourselves to the continent, not just in trite statements, and not in a patronising 'big-brother' way. Instead we need to recognise that we all on this bright continent are linked to each other integrally; that the umbilical cord to the heart of our Africanness may be damaged but that it can never be severed without killing us in the process.