The recent violence against foreigners in South Africa, mainly centered on the crowded township of Alexandra just outside of Johannesburg, is a worrying development for the entire southern African region. Foreigners have been beating a path across South Africa’s borders for the last two decades—mostly illegally—as they run away form wars, failed states, economic collapse, and bad governments in their own nations and hope for at least a shot at some of the prospects available in the region’s economic powerhouse.
In recent weeks some 20,000 foreigners have been chased from their homes—and nearly four dozen have been killed (some even burned alive as others looked on passively)—as the government of South Africa has struggled to stop the attacks. The situation is akin to a pot boiling over. Many native South Africans believe that these immigrants from Zimbabwe, Mozambique, Malawi, and other places on the continent are stealing their jobs and causing crime in their communities. Once the attacks began a few weeks ago it was like dominos falling—a disconcertingly easy start to some venomous acts of violence.
Writing about this xenophobic violence on The Root, Johannesburg-based journalist and author Charlayne Hunter-Gault, reminds us that it (as well as the post-election violence in Kenya earlier this year) is reminiscent of the racially-driven violence in the civil rights-era United States. Hunter-Gault seems to be making the point that the pot is boiling over in Alexandra because it is a sprawling, overcrowded and often putrid township filled with despair and lack of opportunity that is separated by only a few miles from one of Johannesburg’s pristine, and mostly white, suburbs. It is a classic example of the “haves” and the “have-nots” and a reference to the reality that, even in post-apartheid South Africa, the country is still very far from an equal opportunity environment.
Hunter-Gault is an Africanists who believe that the news out of Africa is too negative and that, if we look hard enough, we will see plenty of positive developments on the continent and a bright future for its people. While I may not be a student of this school of thought I can respect it. I agree that there is good news to report in Africa and that that news, in particular, tends to go underreported. I’m continually amazed at the resiliency of so many Africans (including, by the way, the South Africans—both natives and immigrants—who endure life in Alexandra). Africans from every corner of the continent are ignored and handicapped by their own governments and by the world at large while, despite it all, they continue to survive (and sometime thrive) against enormous odds.
But it is terrifying clear that this recent spate of xenophobic violence in South Africa has been largely driven by the continent’s large number failed states and bad governments. The violence is a clear manifestation of just how much the region’s bad governments can harm its people. The flood of foreign refugees to South Africa is a result of recent war in Mozambique, the disastrous rule of Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe, the economic stagnation of Malawi, and so forth and so on. South Africa, by comparison to the rest of the region, is a paradise. In reality, of course, South Africa is ill-equipped economically and politically to handle such a huge influx of foreigners which makes such xenophobic violence a relatively easy thing to develop.
So, while people like Charlayne Hunter-Gault may see this xenophobic violence in South Africa as a symptom of the nation’s continued inequality—similar to the riots and violence that broke out in the United States over racial equality in the 1950s and 60s—and perhaps nothing more than the growing pains that South Africa was expected to suffer on its way to ultimate success one day, I see it as a more troubling display of just how much the existence of poor governance on the continent continues to harm the people of Africa.
Because the United States’ economy is so strong and because it has a need (and, sometimes, even an open desire) for immigrants from Mexico and other places to engage in low-wage jobs that most Americans will not do, illegal immigration into the United States does not have the same disastrous result that it has in South Africa where nearly twenty-five percent of the population is unemployed and half live below the poverty line. Those may be good numbers by African standards but they clearly are not good enough to sustain huge number of immigrants from across the continent.
This violence in South Africa is a clear and tragic example of the urgency for African nations, and the global community, to work at improving the governments of Africa and the economic outlook for its people. The fact that so many Zimbabweans, for example, would rather swim across the crocodile-infested waters of the Limpopo River and make their way to the squalid, dangerous, and overcrowded township of Alexandra in order to scratch out an illegal existence in South Africa rather than stay at home should give us some indication of just how bad things must be in Zimbabwe. The same is true of other immigrants, from Somalia to Lesotho.
Until these nations make it easier for their own citizens to survive the situation is likely only to get worse.
Sunday, June 22, 2008 