Xenophobic attacks ignore history and the strong bonds forged in the liberation struggle, says Imraan Buccus.
Durban - “They want to come here and commit murder. So we say: Let them come, let all the racists come… Let them come! Let us liquidate war once and for all. Then there will be true peace in the region. Not the false peace that we are now experiencing. Let the South Africans come, but let them be clear that the war will end in Pretoria. The war will end in Pretoria, for the majority will take power in Pretoria.”
These words by Mozambique’s first president, Samora Machel, in the wake of South Africa’s cross- border raids in 1981, were remembered earlier this week at Mozambique’s Heroes Day celebrations. We know that Frelimo, Mozambique’s ruling party, was unwavering in its commitment to our struggle. And a group of my international political science students and I were fortunate enough to participate in this week’s celebration, as guests of Frelimo in Maputo.
In South Africa some of us tend to think of Mozambique as a holiday destination – with peri peri chicken, a vibrant night life, the romance of the Arab dhow in the harbour and all those glorious beaches. At other times we tend to think of our neighbour as a place where desperately poor people come from and hijacked cars go to.
We don’t think often enough of the history that binds us together. The ANC and Frelimo, both ruling parties in South Africa and Mozambique respectively, share a long and deep history as liberation movements in the struggle for freedom. The solidarity between the liberation movements developed in the ’60s in the military training camps of Tete, Mozambique, and Kongwa, Tanzania. After Mozambique’s liberation in 1975, this bond intensified both through Mozambique’s provision of significant support to the ANC and through the comradeship shared by the ANC and Frelimo leaders.
The apartheid state was always threatened by this relationship and carried out many raids against Frelimo and the ANC.
After Mozambique’s independence in 1975, Umkhonto we Sizwe, (the ANC’s military wing) could now operate freely on South Africa’s doorstep. Feeling vulnerable, the apartheid defence force carried out a number of operations against the ANC and Frelimo. They included:
* A 1981 attack against the ANC at one of its bases in Maputo, killing 16. The ANC fought back, killing two apartheid military men
* In 1982 the famous South African academic and activist Ruth First was killed by a parcel bomb at Mozambique’s Eduardo Mondlane University. First was the wife of Joe Slovo, then a senior member of the South African Communist Party and the ANC. He later served as the minister of housing in Mandela’s cabinet. Pallo Jordon, arguably the leading intellectual in the ANC, was the first person on the scene.
* In 1983 the South African Air Force attacked Maputo again, destroying ANC bases and killing a number of people
* In 1988, another ANC activist, Albie Sachs, survived a bomb explosion in Maputo. He lost his arm in that explosion. Sachs went on to become a judge in the Constitutional Court.
* In 1989 ANC activists Reginald Mhlongo, Themba Ngesi and Samuel Phinda were killed by a South African Secret Service hit squad
This week, as we drove along the Marginale, the road that winds around the beautiful bay in Maputo, we were able to see some of the damage left by the bomb that cost Albie Sachs his arm and an eye. But today while both countries have serious problems they are both free. The sacrifices that were required for liberation were not for nothing.
We cannot keep paying lip service to Pan-African unity – the truth is that many South Africans see countries like Mozambique and Zimbabwe as little more than places from which poor people migrate to our country looking for work.
Xenophobia runs through our country from top to bottom and from poor people attacking a Mozambican in the xenophobic pogroms in 2008, to the police murdering a Mozambican by dragging him behind their van; to the rich calling for stricter border control, we all carry the burden of a national shame.
We are not alone in our narrow- minded chauvinism.
But the fact that xenophobic attitudes are becoming so widespread (think Soweto) is no excuse for their prevalence in our own society. Xenophobia is like any other prejudice and it is always irrational and morally wrong.
But when one looks at the shared history of struggle that joins South Africa and Mozambique, the discrimination, and sometimes violence, to which Mozambicans are often subject in our country, is even more despicable. Many debts were incurred in the struggle for our freedom. One of these debts, certainly, is to Frelimo and the people of Mozambique.
That debt is not only because Mozambique hosted so many of our activists during the hardest days of the struggle, often at real risk to its own security and citizens. The victory of Frelimo over Portuguese colonialism in Mozambique was also a huge boost to the struggle here.
In 1974 Muntu Myeza, from the South African Students’ Organisation, organised rallies in support of Frelimo. The biggest of these events, and the most contested, was held here in Durban at Currie’s Fountain. The event was in direct defiance of the apartheid regime and it put people like Saths Cooper, Patrick Lekota, Aubrey Mokoape and Strini Moodley in prison.
The 1974 rally in support of Frelimo has gone down in the history of the city, along with the Durban strikes of 1973 and the moment of mass struggle in the 1980s, as one of the great moments in the struggle for freedom in our city.
Forty years later the least that we can do is to treat our neighbours, at home or in our own country, with the respect that they deserve.
* Imraan Buccus is research fellow in the school of social sciences at UKZN and academic director of a university study abroad programme on political transformation.
** The views expressed here are not necessarily those of Independent Media.
The Mercury