I was pondering what to write about today when Angela arrived.
“Did you see the news last night?” she asked me.
I hadn’t.
“They’re killing Zimbabweans and Malawians – beating them – three people have died.”
“Who?” I asked, “who’s killing them – where?”
“Zulus – in Alexandra.”
Alexandra is a shanty town in the northern suburbs of Johannesburg. An estimated 350 000 people live in “Alex”. They occupy 8500 formal houses, 34 000 shacks, 3 hostel complexes, 2 500 flats and numerous old factories and buildings. In the past few days xenophobic violence has flared across the community as local people have lashed out foreigners – Malawians, Zimbabweans, Congolese, Rwandans… Claiming the foreigners take their jobs and their homes. The foreigners, terrified for their lives, have fled to police stations where they are barely getting any food. Some, in fact, have had no food for a few days.
“They say that we must go back to Zimbabwe,” said Angela, “But we can’t, Mugabe is killing us there. Everyday he is killing people. I’m frightened. What if the Xhosas here start doing the same thing here in the Cape. Where will we go? We can’t go back. And if we stay here, South African black people will kill us. I’m worried.”
Worried is an understatement.
“What about Mozambique?” I asked.
“Yes, they are good people in Mozambique, but there are no jobs. You just sell things in the market. I don’t know what we will do.”
And so we face another grim reality of Angela’s daily existence. And that reality is xenophobia - rampant xenophobia which spills and spreads like an oil slick from the north to the south of South Africa. And the interesting thing is this: While, by and large, most white South Africans have accepted the nearly 5 million refugees from various parts of Africa, most black South Africans have not. They view these foreigners as troublemakers who “steal” their homes and their jobs. Ironically, the refugees have aided the South African economy hugely, doing whatever jobs come their way – while many locals would prefer to see largesse simply handed to them on a plate. So, yes, local people may be right in saying the foreigners are stealing their jobs – but only because they can – because many locals are simply not willing to work in the same way. It’s a tragic sort of irony.
“I pray every day to God,” said Angela, “I pray that he will make them not hate us and hurt us. I don’t understand it,” she said, “We are all Africans together.”
And therein lies the greatest irony. Not only are we all Africans together on this benighted continent, but we are all humans together, not just in Africa but in the whole world. And look at us, look at how we bicker and fight. I often wonder what an ET looking at this planet must think.
The simple reality is this, one man feels he is threatened and he attacks the man who lives next door. You see it the world over. You just have to look at the rise of nationalism across Europe. You hear the same arguments in the UK – “these foreigners are taking our jobs, we must have tougher immigration control”. And so it goes. It's a strange phenomenon for a global "village" isn't it, the villagers hating and fighting with one another.
But while most of us sit in our safe houses, with food on the tables, in Zimbabwe – and countless other places - people are starving and living in fear of their lives.
And as the global economic crisis plays itself out the people who are worst hit are the poorest. Local people are rising up at this moment against refugees because food prices have soared as a result of purported global food shortages – but you just have to look at the considerable food waste in the West to really question the reality of that position.
“I can’t go back to Zim,” Angela said as she pushed the iron back and forth over a shirt, “We will die. I know we will die. If Mugabe doesn’t kill us, we will starve to death. But I am frightened to stay here. I don’t know what we will do.”
And I have no answers. I don’t know what to say to her. All I can do is pass on the phenomenal goodwill that so many of you sent her via this blog last week. And when I do so, her eyes soften and she says, “Thank you, thank you, there are good people in the world.”
For more on the Alexandra violence and the plight of African foreigners in South Africa, you can take a look here here, here and here
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