The South Africans at the forefront of Operation Dudula are themselves migrants who many centuries ago trekked largely from Central to Southern Africa, writes Ebrahim Harvey.
Much in life, especially in politics, is dependent on the fact that the lessons of history, particularly if learnt timeously and acted upon, can avoid great human anguish, loss, death and destruction. Arguably, nowhere is this truism more relevant and evident than with the present destructive scourge that xenophobia is in South Africa. But it first raised its ugly head way back in May 2008. So, what has happened since then?
Ultimately, like with almost everything else, it is what a government does or fails to do which will determine the fate and destiny of much or most things in our lives.
In South Africa, there is a strong and compelling case to be made that the government failed to effectively deal with and combat xenophobia since 2008. In this regard, the numerous failures by the police and law-enforcement agencies stand out as the biggest reasons.
Linked closely to those failures is the growing problem for many years of corruption in the police, especially in relation to identifying problems and the lack of compliance with relevant laws and monitoring to that effect. Police have often been bribed by desperate job seekers from other countries who have not got the required documents.
Global economic crisis
But it is essential first to briefly define xenophobia and then identify the factors that create, cause and sustain it. Research will show that xenophobia has often happened alongside its twin, racism, which together has bedevilled the country since 2008, which very significantly coincided with the beginning of a global capitalist crisis, unleashed by the mortgage crisis in the United States.
For the purpose of this column, I define xenophobia as anything which reflects an aversion, intolerance, hostility, hatred and violence towards job seekers or people from other countries, especially in Africa, who work and live in SA but who don’t have the required documentation. This is so especially during what is certainly an unprecedented South African and in fact global economic crisis, which has seen unemployment climb to the highest levels ever in the country. Undoubtedly, the devastating impacts of the Covid-19 pandemic and the recent and ongoing invasion of Ukraine by the Russian Federation have escalated joblessness into the biggest social crisis in South Africa today.
In this situation, xenophobia springs from a vicious competition for jobs, between locals and those from other African countries, which is the most prominent and, in fact, defining feature globally of instances of it, made much worse by the current unprecedented global capitalist crisis and the harsh reality that without jobs people and their families are daily stalked by worsening destitution, poverty, ill-health and often as a result – death.
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However, before weighing on those matters, the first thing that must be said is that our ANC-controlled state has not covered itself in glory in the fight against xenophobia. In fact, some of our politicians have themselves, wittingly or unwittingly, stoked the fires of xenophobia. I’m thinking now of xenophobic comments made by Gauteng Premier David Makhura a few years ago about the challenges his provincial government faced in Gauteng, especially around jobs and medical and other public services it is constitutionally required to provide indiscriminately to the population.
And if they did not make such comments, like former president, Thabo Mbeki, and other ANC leaders, they strenuously denied the existence of xenophobia in the country and played down its numerous public expressions, especially in black townships. A few years ago, the late King Goodwill Zwelithini also made some outrageously xenophobic remarks.
But it is a historical and global fact that whenever there is a great and growing socioeconomic crisis anywhere, it inevitably and invariably gives rise to xenophobia or racism or both among the population, especially between the indigenous population and migrants who live in the country but originally come from other countries. But we are all ultimately migrants, whether whites or blacks, except the Khoi and San peoples, who are the true natives of this country.
Failures from the police
The South Africans who were called “African” under apartheid and are at the forefront of Operation Dudula (which in Zulu means to repel or push back), a clearly orchestrated and very dangerous campaign to remove all undocumented migrants, are themselves migrants who many centuries ago trekked largely from central Africa to Southern Africa. Dudula and especially its leader, Nhlanhla “Lux” Dlamini, need to digest this fact and its implications in their campaigns urgently.
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But it is in the first place the palpable failures of the police over many years to do their work that led to the formation of Dudula, which has been accused by the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) of being a vigilante group. It is, however, not the first time that vigilantism, though Dlamini hotly denies that they are a vigilante group, emerges as a direct result of police failures to do their work and the widespread corruption in their ranks. This phenomenon has deep roots in black townships for decades, in fact, for which the government and police must ultimately take responsibility.
This brings me to what is probably the most dangerous development this week after clashes occurred between activists from the EFF and Dudula, after a resident of Dobsonville in Soweto who was accused of being a drug peddler and confronted and manhandled in his home by Dudula members and supporters, reported it to the red berets. This set the stage for what was almost a violent confrontation between EFF and Dudula members on Wednesday after this person and EFF activists who supported him laid charges against Dlamini at the local police station.
Unlawful acts
EFF members were armed with various dangerous weapons and appeared almost spoiling for a violent confrontation with Dudula supporters. They demanded that Dlamini be arrested and charged within seven days. Indeed, he was arrested on Thursday, which shows that the police were worried by the official entrance of the EFF in this explosive matter.
But Malema must not conveniently forget that it is he and leader of the Patriotic Alliance, Gayton McKenzie, who in January aggressively and misguidedly went around to various a few restaurants and stores they suspected had employed undocumented foreign workers and demanded action against them. There is no doubt that such acts and the brazenness with which they were carried out were both unlawful and indeed smacked of xenophobia. Besides, Malema and the EFF had no right to demand to check and assess the employment ratio of locals and foreign nationals. That is the work of the Department of Labour and the police.
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However, there will be very dangerous consequences if Dudula supplants the police’s anti-criminal work, especially in black townships which are very volatile at the moment as a result of the impact of a multifaceted socioeconomic crisis of worsening poverty and unemployment and the havoc it is wreaking on embattled communities. It is this situation that explains why many of the unemployed youth enter the drug trade in townships in order to survive.
But what is very clear is that if President Cyril Ramaphosa, who also strongly criticised Dudula and said they were an unlawful outfit, and police minister, Bheki Cele, do not immediately address policing matters around undocumented migrants, such clashes can lead to terrible violence which will only worsen the overall situation in black townships for residents, who are already being torn between supporters of Malema and Dlamini. This is a gravely serious matter which Cele in particular needs to address urgently.
I conclude with what was a flagrantly unnecessary, arguably unlawful and indeed counterproductive prohibition of a march by the Johannesburg municipality, which Kopanang Africa Against Xenophobia organised for early this week, to coincide with Human Rights Day. A very important march, especially by a very significant anti-xenophobia initiative to highlight the fact that all forms of xenophobia are violations of human rights, was unjustifiably banned.
– Dr Ebrahim Harvey is an independent political writer, analyst and author of ‘The Great Pretenders: Race and Class under ANC Rule’, published by Jacana in May 2021.
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