From Shame through Helplessness ... to Fear

Today it feels like South Africa is teetering on the edge of major disaster.

About ten days ago, the so-called "xenophobic violence" started up north in the township of Alexandra in Gauteng. Since then over 40 people have died, some brutally hacked or burned to death by rampaging mobs. Over 25,000 foreigners - men, women and children from Zimbabwe, Mozambique, Somalia, Malawi, Nigeria, Ghana etc - have been displaced, their shacks looted and burned, forcing them to seek refuge in police stations and other community centres. Zimbabwe and Malawi have instituted official repatriation programmes, aimed at bringing their people back home. It is estimated that of SA's 49 million people, maybe 4 - 5 million are foreign nationals, some here legally but the majority illegally.

When it was all happening far away, up in the townships outside Johannesburg, like many others I felt shocked and ashamed that 'our people' could behave in such a barbaric fashion but still it seemed distant from my everyday life. But today that changed. We woke up to find that the violence was right here, on our doorsteps in the Cape. The local papers told of attacks on Somalian and Zimbabweans in settlements in and around Cape Town - of looting and burning and of thousands of foreigners being transported out of the area by the police for their own protection, as crowds wielding pangas, knives, batons and homemade weapons took to the streets.

At work, colleagues who live in these areas had stories to tell:

• A Mozambican who works with one staff member's husband was warned (not sure by whom) TWO DAYS ago to 'leave the area or suffer the consequences'.
  
• Another staff member lives over the road from a Somalian woman. A taxi arrived at the her door in the middle of the night, bringing her all the stock from her small shop, which had just been burnt to the ground.
  
• Tonight, as I was leaving work, the RN taking over from me was on the phone arranging to pay for two Zimbabwean friends of hers to be brought from their shack on the other side of the Peninsula to her house on this side, just to keep them safe.
  

At lunch time today, I walked through a busy mall and I looked at the faces around me. As a white South African, I am ashamed to say that I cannot tell the difference between any of the African cultures. We have 11 different official languages here and each group has their own society and culture. How then can I know who is from another country? And as I looked, I wondered who among those people was foreign and fearing for their safety, their lives? And I also wondered what I would do if I saw someone being attacked? Would I step up and say NO? Or would I keep quiet and skulk away? Where is the line between standing up for what you believe - and staying safe because I have a family who need me? What if the person being attacked was also a mom with a baby? What would I do?


Later on today, I mentioned these thoughts and found that I was not alone - many of us had had the same experience. And underneath all this lurks that other fear: we, the white people of South Africa, are also 'foreigners' in this land. The rallying cry of not that long ago was "Kill the Farmer, Kill the Boer!"

According to BBC news tonight, the situation is calming down a bit. But there are too many unanswered questions and too much anger ... and throughout this whole thing, our "President" - the same wimp who said of Zimbabwe: "Crisis? What crisis?" - has been hugely conspicuous by his absense and his silence. He has not visited the hard-hit areas, he has not spoken out, he has not offered apologies to those who have suffered at the hands of the citizens of his country.

It's not over yet.