What happens to a dream deferred?
Does it dry up
Like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore –
And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over –
Like a syrupy sweet?
Maybe it just sags
Like a heavy load.
Or does it explode?
The words of Harlem Renaissance poet, Langston Hughes, remind me of the Freedom Charter – the fountain of our dreams.
Next month we celebrate six decades of inspiration and hope that has nurtured our dreams.
One such dream: “Only a democratic state, based on the will of all the people, can secure to all their birthright without distinction of colour, race, sex or belief”, inspired generations to struggle for their birthright – denied to the majority of our people, excluded from the rights and privileges a democracy entitles every citizen.
In our long walk to realise our dreams enshrined in the Freedom Charter, the current discourse on xenophobia opens a window to explore our ingrained psychosocial and socio-economic fault lines. Or, we could shut the window, ratchet the shutters of our “discursive laagers” and shackle our dreams. “Discursive laagers” are the discourses that shape our psychosocial narratives arising from an insular and closed mindset or social system.
Our polarised narratives are based on centuries of racism, injustice, inequality, dispossession, exploitation, segregation and violence, which resulted in dehumanisation and social exclusion.
The Freedom Charter placed hope in a democratic state to address and redress the past injustices. Has our democratic state and our freedom – a birthright in a democracy – fundamentally challenged the entrenched fault lines that continue to haunt our society?
In the light of the xenophobic violence against our African and Asian brothers and sisters, what progress have we made in confronting our psychosocial and socio-economic ghosts?
Are these ghosts of the past imprisoning our dreams?
Let’s start with our political leaders’ responses to xenophobia. After the May 2008 xenophobic attacks, former president Thabo Mbeki, at the Gathering of Remembrance to honour those who died during the violence, spoke of the shame of the heartless acts, which “betrayed the dreams of many generations, including our own”. He asserted that South Africans are “not diseased by the terrible affliction of xenophobia”; instead he stated that we harbour in our hearts a deep-seated respect for Ubuntu and a “spirit of friendship and human compassion” towards migrants. He then went on to blame “naked criminal activity… in the garb of xenophobia” that inflicted this “terrible pain”.
Many South Africans would tend to agree with the former president that we are not diseased by the inhumanness of xenophobia.
Yet, seven years on, in the month of our Freedom Day, our nation is outraged with the tenacity of our ghastly ghosts, inflicting death, destruction and desolation on Somalian and other immigrants. Our Ubuntu so articulately praised by Mbeki seems drained. The world is dazed at our cruelty against the “other”, yet again.
After centuries of darkness, the dream of a “rainbow nation” is slowing exploding.
In the aftermath of this tragedy, which displaced nearly 2 000 immigrants, President Jacob Zuma reiterated the former president’s assertion: “South Africans are not xenophobic”, and in chorus with his Police and Home Affairs ministers placed the blame on “criminal elements”. While the Zulu king accused a “third force” and the Speaker in Parliament blamed “hidden forces”.
These claims by government leaders, despite an open letter sent in January 2015 from the African Diaspora Forum challenging our government on its denial over the past seven years that there is “no xenophobia in South Africa, (and) always questioning the nature of this violence and attributing it to ‘crime’, instead of recognising it for what it is”.
Similarly, many other organisations and individuals expressed their criticism of our government’s response.
An international network, the Southern African Migration Programme’s 2013 study, revealed that South Africa is one of the countries “most opposed to immigration where nearly 80 percent of citizens either support prohibition on the entry of migrants or would like to place strict limits on it”.
Do we really have such an intense aversion to immigrants? Is there another lens to view the violence against foreign nationals, beyond “criminality” and our leaders’ denial of xenophobia?
Behavioural and neuroscience research indicates that identity and belonging are essential to our existence as humans. Psychologist and neuroscientist Jaak Panksepp notes the importance of social acceptance and inclusion, as human survival is “founded on the quality of our social bonds’’.
Are marginalised South Africans involved in violent acts asserting their right as citizens to belong, after centuries of denial of their birthright through exclusion? Are they forcefully asserting the realisation of their dreams sanctified in the Freedom Charter – deferred over two decades of freedom?
Award-winning author Jonny Steinberg, in his book A Man of Good Hope, on the journey of a young Somalian man to Cape Town, writes: “Perversely, xenophobia is a product of citizenship, the claiming of a new birthright. Finally, we belong here, and that means that you do not. Some say that the perversion runs deep, that black South Africans are re-enacting the rules of the old apartheid state”.
Likewise, a 2011 study titled “The Smoke that Calls”, highlights the concept of “insurgent citizenship” in explaining violence during community protests and xenophobic attacks in seven black townships. This study, conducted by the Centre for the Study of Violence and Reconciliation (CSVR) and the Society Work and Development Institute (SWOP) at the University of the Witwatersrand, was in response to the 2008 violence.
According to the study, the processes of class formation are producing “differentiated citizenship” which distributes rights and privileges (birthrights) differentially. In claiming their citizenship, marginalised groups respond through acts of “insurgent citizenship” – comparable to community struggles in the 1980s, with similar repertoires of violence in current insurgencies over citizenship and social exclusion.
Also the study claims that these insurgencies have a “darker side”, which reproduces “patriarchal prejudices, xenophobic exclusion, and the use of violence in political and social disputes and to buttress local power – practices which corrode, undermine and restrict the basis of citizenship”.
Notably, the study shows the central role of the governing party in many of these local struggles and contestations for political power (which secures access to state resources), through behaviours and actions of its national, provincial or local party members or disaffected factions or alliance members.
Ben Okri, eminent Nigerian poet and novelist, visiting South Africa in April, attributes the widespread anger and violence of the marginalised as “rage against their realities… dissatisfied with the direction their country is going”. He views some of the protests and violence, for example the UCT students’ statue protests, as displaced rage. Could we understand the xenophobic incidents as an indirect expression of anger and resentment? Okri cautions: “Today it will be statues (and immigrants). Tomorrow it will be something much more direct.”
Psychologist Arnold Mindell, who facilitates transformation processes in post-conflict nations, provides a possible explanation, cautioning that “people excluded from the mainstream freedoms and power are left with two choices: they can resort to riot and revolution or they can turn to crime and drugs”.
Xenophobic related violence is only one form of acting out on injustice and inequality experienced through exclusion in a democratic society. Maybe the resentment, discontent and anger that is prevalent in our country today would not have escalated into such inhumane and savage attacks had we begun to address the exaggerated acts of violence, anger and aggression that continue to manifest in the increasing incidence of gender-based violence and specifically femicide, child abuse and violence related to community protests, labour conflict and during criminal activities.
Despite the violence, our nation has also witnessed healing, compassion, forgiveness and reconciliation. Still much more is needed.
Delivering the 13th Steve Biko Lecture in 2012, Okri observed that healing is dreaming, and that healing is an opportunity to transform oneself out of suffering and trauma, and the heroic effort that was required to overcome oppression.
To realise our dreams our nation, across all sectors, race and class, needs to confront our psychosocial ghosts that continue to distress our dreams. People desire their birthright, their citizenship, and their identity, which is slowly slipping away from their tenuous grasp. Civil society formations, independent of local political power elites, would serve to give voice to people in regaining their birthright.
People yearn for exemplary leaders: ethical, inspirational, visionary, democratic and empathetic leaders who understand their problems and tackle them head on, rather than deflect their leadership responsibility. South Africans loathe egocentric and ethno-centric leaders driven by the trappings of power and parochial self-interest. And find it disrespectful to be labelled “counter-revolutionaries” by politicians who owe their positions to the masses who voted them into political office in the past four terms.
These types of leaders cheat the nation, especially the marginalised, of their dreams – dreams envisioned by our great leaders – black and white, men and women – who adopted the Freedom Charter on June 26, 1955, and the new constitution in 1996.
We are privileged to live in a democracy. It’s our duty to build a nation that never fails those who still yearn to taste the fruits of freedom. As the Freedom Charter forewarned, “our country will never be prosperous or free until all our people live in brotherhood, enjoying equal rights and opportunities”. Or our dreams deferred will explode – bringing forth darkness and new nightmares to torment our souls, denying us the dream that “South Africa belongs to all who live in it, black and white, and that no government can justly claim authority unless it is based on the will of all the people”.