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05.08.2015 Feature Article

Stroke Of My Pen: Xenophobia In South Africa: A By-Product Of Apartheid

Stroke Of My Pen:  Xenophobia In South Africa: A By-Product Of Apartheid
05.08.2015 LISTEN

All fallacies put aside – logical or emotional, xenophobia in post-apartheid South Africa is a product of apartheid.

Discrimination, force of arms, falsification of history, pseudo science, religion, the myth of white superiority and legal skullduggery have been used to deny the indigenous South Africans from their birth right.

Apartheid, however, cannot be a scape goat for the violent actions of South Africans today; racial discrimination came to an end in 1994, but then again acts of violence on the lives of South Africans have not died with the end of apartheid.

In a feature, “Pistorius, race, crime and gun culture” published by the New African magazine, October 2014 edition pages 8 – 11, the author, Pusch Commey asserts, “…historically South Africa is steeped in violence. Its long history of racial oppression was maintained by guns and violence… Then there’s the history of bygone eras, where in the black townships the role models were the smartly dressed gangsters, who attracted the most beautiful girls”.

This implies that South Africans have experienced the obnoxious act of apartheid to the extent that, every South African who has borne the brunt of this kind of system believes that violence is a way of life.

The indigenous South African started suffering from 1692 when the first Europeans who settled started taking away from indigenous South Africans their birth right-land. However, before the Dutch arrived at the Cape of Good Hope, South Africans were tilling their land and feeding themselves.

The issue of land is a delicate matter everywhere it rears its head – across the continent of Africa, if you take the land from a people you are taking their very existence. There have been cases where projects are stalled because the matter of land has not been dealt with appropriately.

It is argued that over 90% of all wars in history have been fought over land and resources and as such accessibility to land and subsequent ownership to it empowers economically.

One of the efforts to redistribute land to landless blacks was the open market approach which was one of the compromises that led to the transition to black majority rule in 1994.

This approach, Willing Seller/Willing Buyer is an open market approach where government would simply purchase land on the open market and distribute it to landless indigenous South Africans.

There was also the Restitution of Land Rights Act in 1994 and its deadline for claims was in 1998. This was a period in which indigenous South Africans could lodge claims to their ancestral land.

Both approaches failed because there were greedy collusions between blacks and whites as well as the frustration of the law.

“How do you create a productive economy after the many structural disfigurements of slavery or forced labour, without reproducing those patterns of exploitation?”A question people at the helm of South African affairs have failed to answer.

In 2007, there were xenophobic attacks on foreigners which resulted in the deaths of forty people. Some of these foreigners were close neighbours of South Africa; Zimbabweans, Mozambicans, and Zambians.

The basis for these attacks have been, that foreigners were taking jobs, housing and even women from the locals. Simply there are economic disparities among indigenous South Africans, so they vent their spleen on fellow Africans who are perceived to be taking their jobs.

Immigration in South Africa has received attention dire to immigrants- amendment to the Immigration Act, legalised in 2014. The rationale is to protect South African jobs and businesses as well as attract only necessary skills and investments.

Again, most migrants are involved in one fraudulent business or the other to the extent that, magistrates in South African courts already know which nationalities are experts in drug trafficking, housebreaking, murders, cash heists, bank robberies and motor vehicle theft.

South Africans owe Africa debts of gratitude, but then again, condemning xenophobic attacks on fellow Africans who are foreigners in South Africa, let us consider the plight of indigenous South Africans in the light of migrants.

What are other African governments doing to ensure that their citizens stay in their own country and not be lured by any mirage of green pastures in South Africa?

To the South Africans, immigrants may be coming in droves today, treat them well for the world is shuffling.

UBUNTU, WHICH MEANS “I AM BECAUSE YOU ARE” OR UMUNTU NGUMUNTU NQUABANTU MEANING, “A HUMAN IS HUMAN BECAUSE OF OTHER HUMANS”

[email protected]/www.gudzetsekomla.blogspot.com

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