Cape Town - Over the past week South Africa has witnessed horrific violence in which large groups of people in KwaZulu-Natal, Gauteng and elsewhere have perpetrated disturbing acts of brutality, theft and vandalism, mainly at people from other parts of Africa.
As we come to grips with the scope and gruesome intensity of these events, many are seeking answers about the origins of the phenomenon, and the factors driving it.
This orgy of violence and destruction has drawn widespread condemnation, and this week Professor Kwesi Kwaa Prah, one of Africa’s most respected thinkers, was searing and clinical in assessing the triggers for the events that have claimed several lives and displaced thousands.
He singled out Zulu King Goodwill Zwelethini as one of the primary progenitors. His speech, hours before the violence erupted in KwaZulu-Natal, labelled “foreigners” as the cause of the problems people were undergoing.
“It is distressingly shameful and unfortunate that the King of the Zulus has lent his words to xenophobia, the consequences of which have been bitterness and hatred, and this should be a lesson to all leaders to watch what they say and do.”
The King has since denied making the comments, saying he was misquoted. Prah, an international authority on xenophobia, is the founder of the Centre for the Advanced Study of African Society (Casas), a think-tank dedicated to research of critical developments in Africa and the Diaspora.
He noted the haunting spectre of illegality that has brought the violence into the country’s commercial centres, and turned South Africa’s largest cities into war zones, and called for rigorous law enforcement to “stem the tide of mayhem and pandemonium”.
He said that rather than a knee-jerk reaction, the South African government should urgently create “a dialogue of influential people to bring back sanity and calm”. Prah was also unequivocal in his assessment of the role played by the South African authorities, including the police and military, along with the role played by nefarious elements within foreigner communities in “exacerbating the crisis”.
In this respect, he observed that the “authorities have failed in their job of curbing illegal migration, which is unacceptable anywhere in the world”. This unregulated migration, he said, had also brought in many criminal elements, who he believes are at the forefront of a scourge of illegal activities such as prostitution and drugs.
A further observation was that the authorities, by failing to enforce regulations, so drawing the ire of locals, had allowed certain elements in the foreigner communities to take over key areas such as Hillbrow in Johannesburg, Bellville, and markets in public spaces, provoking South African citizens.
The intellectual, who has been at the forefront of analysing racism in the global African experience, believes there can be no sustainable solution unless people properly understood and worked proactively to counter the threats posed by xenophobia.
He provided guidance to understanding this phenomenon in a paper, Xenophobia amongst Africans, presented in Durban 14 years ago at the World Conference against Racism.
In Prah’s assessment, the general use of the word xenophobia describes “a range of antagonistic attitudes and reactions to foreigners or outsiders in a given community”.
In certain periods or situations, he argues, these reactions “are mild expressions of rejection and disapproval”.
However, as is evident in the present crisis spreading across South Africa, “these reactions are spread with seething rancour, hatred and violence which bear some of the crudest and most despicable features of human nature”.
He went on to explain that this demonstration of xenophobia, as the direct opposite of African solidarity and unity, “continues to dog and undermine South African society”.,
Prah said it invariably occurred “when social and economic conditions become difficult, (and) the ideology of xenophobia becomes the rationale of right-wing elements explaining why there is difficulty”.
He went on to explain that South Africa was the most economically advanced and technologically endowed country on the African continent, yet it was also the most unequal country, with the largest number of shantytowns.
“South Africa has the most depressing experiential conditions in Africa, still organised along apartheid colour lines, and this has not been systematically addressed.”
In this respect the South African government has not dealt with the primary problems underpinning the instability of the society.
“We have not been able to relieve the pressure that has given rise to the frustration, and this should be a wake-up call to deal with these problems, so people don’t attack their neighbours.”
He also said it was incorrect to single South Africa out for xenophobia, as it had occurred and continued to occur elsewhere on the continent and in other parts of the world.
As examples he cited the Aliens Compliance Act, under the Busia administration in 1969, when Ghana expelled thousands of Nigerians and other West Africans, many of whom had been born there.
Another example was in Nigeria in 1983, during a slump in the oil market, when Nigeria expelled millions of West Africans including 1.5 million Ghanaians, using alien restrictive legislation.
In Prah’s view, xenophobia could not be easily confronted, and needed to be studied historically and scientifically.
Prah suggested, “there must be urgent action initiated by the South African government, which will be a public dialogue, so all understand the need to return to sanity and calm, stop the carnage and deal with the root causes – poverty and people’s conditions”.
Weekend Argus