Film-maker seeks solutions to Afrophobia

A foreign woman and her child sit with their belongings in a tent on a sports field in Isipingo, south of Durban, April 9, 2015. Several hundred foreign nationals have sought refuge in the tents after xenophobia driven violence forced them to flee their homes. REUTERS/Rogan Ward

A foreign woman and her child sit with their belongings in a tent on a sports field in Isipingo, south of Durban, April 9, 2015. Several hundred foreign nationals have sought refuge in the tents after xenophobia driven violence forced them to flee their homes. REUTERS/Rogan Ward

Published Apr 26, 2015

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Cape Town - It is refreshing to encounter a voice that can put depraved acts into perspective amid the tide of pessimism brought on by marauding mobs in the scourge of xenophobia that has gripped the country.

Abdulkadir Ahmed Said, a film-maker from Somalia, does not mince his words on xenophobia or, as he calls it, Afrophobia.

This is a self-styled “knife of many edges”.

Said cuts deep into the issue, saying South Africa “is struggling to define its identity... and... is paying the price of its independence”.

Said has travelled, lived and worked on all the continents except Antarctica. He has more than 45 years in the film and television industry, where he has exposed many uncomfortable truths in more than two dozen documentaries and films, mostly presenting the African experience.

His is an eloquent voice from the migrant community that can be part of the solution.

“At a human level I feel hurt when I see acts of Afrophobia directed towards fragile refugees. However, when South Africans attack other Africans we need to understand why they strike their brothers and sisters. We must accept that every country must go through a period of political growth, and it is hoped that South Africa will find better solutions to what we have experienced on the continent, because independence comes at a price.”

Said speaks from experience. Somalia is a country without proper governance, an inhospitable space where human interaction often takes place over the barrel of a gun. Many Somalians have fled.

It is from this perspective that Said examines the events that have played out in South Africa over the past weeks, similar to those of 2008 when many African migrants and refugees were displaced .

“There is a mindset that must be achieved, a need to move from ethnic, provincial thinking to develop a proper and enduring identity, without shortcuts, because much of what still defines people’s perceptions of who they are is caught within the consequences of apartheid education.

“If this is not done, we could see (happening here) what happened in Somalia, where there was a disintegration into tribal identities.

“This is what I am doing now in my training of South Africans... as an objective realist, through film. There must be a comprehensive programme to enlighten people of the consequences of what was done.”

The answer could lie in environmentalist Baba Dioum’s words: “We conserve what we love, we love what we understand and we understand what we are taught.”

Weekend Argus

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