Tag: apartheid

South Africans, explain your unforgivable actions

A foreign national walks with his children after clashes broke out between a group of locals and police on April 14  2015 in Durban. Hundreds of people have been displaced and forced to flee their homes this week. (Pic: AFP)
A foreign national walks with his children after clashes broke out between a group of locals and police on April 14 2015 in Durban. Hundreds of people have been displaced and forced to flee their homes. (Pic: AFP)

This week, media screens have flashed images of black South Africans executing violent acts on other blacks who are not South Africans. I have seen people petrol bombed in their shops. I have seen images of bloodied heads and faces. I have seen images of angry mobs walking through the streets, mpangas and other weapons in tow, ready to lash out at any foreigner. But more so the black foreigner.

These people have come to South Africa for a number of reasons – school, work, business, economic opportunity, refuge. They came to South Africa to live their lives, but are now being punished for making such a decision.

It’s black on black crime like we’ve never seen before. Actually, we’ve seen this before. In 2008, 2011, oh, 2014 and 2015. It happens year after year in South Africa with no end to this horrific attitude in sight.

It appears that black South Africans are angry because other Africans have come to South Africa to take away opportunities that rightfully ‘belong’ to them. This latest upsurge in violence is as a result of King Goodwill Zwelithini’s comments that foreigners must go back to their homelands. Of course, the Zulu king has denied it, claiming his comments have been distorted but the damage has been done, and one cannot deny that even if his comments have been taken wrongly, there is an amount of anti-foreign sentiment there.

Why? Why can a country like South Africa resort to these awful acts? In apartheid days, black South Africans were harboured in many African countries – Zambia, Zimbabwe, Malawi, Kenya. All the countries rallied together, sometimes at the peril of their own stability, to ensure South Africa’s freedom. Lives were lost in South Africa, fighting apartheid. Lives were lost outside of South Africa, too. And yet, these people, who have their political freedom because of us, are now beating and battering us as though none of that happened, but also as though it’s okay to treat humans like that. Black South Africans are attacking foreigners, burning their homes and businesses to make a point. And their point is this:

You are taking over our country.

You are taking our jobs.

You are taking what should be ours.

South Africans have found themselves competing with foreign nationals on a number of fronts and with the history of marginalisation, perhaps it was all too much. The government wasn’t protecting their jobs, houses or opportunities but bringing in even more foreigners. They took matters into their own hands. Regardless, it’s shocking. And I don’t understand it.

What I do know is this should not be accepted. Governments are not taking a large enough stand against xenophobic attacks against their nationals, probably because the region depends so heavily on South African goods and investment that boycotting SA investments and products would cripple their own economies.

These are human rights violations on a grand scale and I would like to see South Africa penalised for this. I would also like to see the foreigners repatriated to their own countries. Get out. Malawi has begun bussing its people back to Nyasaland. Good. I hope they stay home.

Next should be Zambia, or Zimbabwe. And let all other African countries follow suit. Then we’ll see who’s left in South Africa. We’ll see how well their economy would run, how well their services will be managed and delivered.

And then we’ll see who will be targeted next.

Because it seems to me, these are just angry people who have the residues of apartheid left in their souls and cannot be freed from that grip.

But they don’t see it.

Mali Kambandu-Nkhoma is a writer living and working in Lusaka, Zambia. She writes on development issues, and creatively on films.  She blogs at malikambandu.wordpress.com

Race and racism in the Republic of Cape Town

(Pic: Gallo)
(Pic: Gallo)

Cape Town is so conservative. It’s not surprising then that the rest of the country calls it “The Republic” – a country not quite a part of the so-called new South Africa. You don’t have to look far to see whom Cape Town caters for. Just take a short drive from Vredehoek to Khayelitsha, as a start. If you’re not the driving type, take one of those cute red tour buses, plug in those nifty little earphones and learn the unpalatable history of this city, said with such timid self-awareness so as not to give away what nearly every Capetonian knows – that Cape Town is still divided along racial lines.

Anyone who lives in the city centre will vehemently deny this although it’s evidently clear, from the racial makeup of boardrooms and suburbs to those who are left to enjoy the city after 5pm. It is an awkward contradiction for a city that desperately wants to be seen as a progressive “World Design Capital”. Unless by design it means the invisible lines that run across the city, dividing it into specific racial areas: the whites in affluent suburbs and the CBD, the blacks and the coloureds in the townships; a spatial arrangement akin to that of a chest drawer with distinct shelves and compartments that contain each puzzle piece of Cape Town in its place – except for the bergies and buskers who seem intolerable nuisances. (Remember the assault of a blind busker by police last year?)

The other not-so-famous incidents include a “private function” policy at certain bars, such as Asoka, where black people have the unfortunate position of being turned away at the door once the colour quota has been reached. There was also that interesting piece of journalism by the Cape Argus, last year, which uncovered what was evidently a stated preference for white tenants by property owners in suburbs around the City Bowl. The city has vehemently refuted claims that it’s racist. Here, I must concede that Cape Town isn’t racist – at least not in the classical sense of what we see in documentaries and exhibitions about apartheid. There are no “Whites Only” signs around the city. It must be an unfortunate coincidence then that there are hardly any black people who live in the affluent parts of Cape Town. It must also be an unfortunate coincidence that novelist Teju Cole, in his interview with City Press about the Open Book Fair, stated: “[Cape Town] is a divided society where privilege accrues very much to people who are white and who have money.”

A woman carrying a child walks down an alleyway in Blikkiesdorp ("Tin Can Town" in Afrikaans), a settlement of corrugated iron houses about 25km east of Cape Town. (Pic: AFP)
A woman carrying a child walks down an alleyway in Blikkiesdorp (“Tin Can Town” in Afrikaans), a settlement of corrugated iron houses about 25km east of Cape Town. (Pic: AFP)

When I went to the Open Book Fair in Cape Town last September, I nearly tripped over myself when I realised how homogenous the audience was – a pale sea of whiteness jostling around brilliant black writers. I distinctly remember thinking: don’t these white folk find it strange that there are no black people at this event, except for a negligible number of tokens, myself included? Contrast that to the Jozi Book Fair or any art opening showcasing a black artist’s work. Johannesburg, as far as art is concerned, has a more diverse audience; a more informed audience than Cape Town, and a notably larger black middle class. Some attribute this to the economic status of the city but the alternative answers avail themselves easily when you speak to black professionals who are about to relocate to the City Of Gold. Often you’ll hear that there is little or no transformation within the organisations and companies situated in Cape Town. The bosses are white, the tea lady is black, Jabu answers to Chris. In a nutshell, Cape Town companies are run by white males.

As if this wasn’t enough, even the visual arts crowd is predominantly white despite the fact that “nearly two thirds of emerging visual artists under the age of 40, in South Africa, are black” according to Joost Bosland, one of the directors of the Stevenson Gallery in Cape Town . The very people, I presume, these emerging black artists would love to have a conversation with through their work never get to see the work, at all. And the art industry seems perfectly fine with this. Typically, you’ll find a group of black artists doing work that concerns something about them being black but it’s shown in spaces and to people who aren’t quite engaged with the stories being told by the artists; people who appreciate the work from a distance. Some artists struggle with this. I chatted to Mohau Modisakeng, a visual artist, about how race plays out in the arts: “I look at art as a language, a language that functions like any other – using pictures and symbols. And my language is informed by my mother’s story and my father’s story, and how I grew up. I’d say my audience is people who share the similar circumstances in life, whether it’s social, political or economic. They are my ideal audience, but I can’t get to them because of these frameworks that are in place.”

These frameworks are a historical fact that persists to this day. A present reality that is burdened by our history of deliberate social exclusion, which makes for very specific demarcation of the various groups who are in or out, or comfortable or not comfortable in a space; a fact currently at play in this city, sans the apartheid signage. The white man who recently told my friend at the Harley’s Liquor store that he wished “he’d gotten rid of all of you when we had a chance” simply because he thought she was jumping the queue to pay for a bottle of red wasn’t racist – he was being conservative, by Cape Town standards. He just wanted her to know her historic place and to remain in it – and that place is nowhere near him and his lily-white Cape Town CBD.

L.L. Fikeni lives, writes and works in Cape Town.

After tears: Mandela’s middle-class legacy

One of our neighbours had an after-tears function at their home on Sunday. It’s when people get together after the funeral of a loved one in vibrant (and often raucous) acknowledgement of life and the person who has passed on.

I’ve only known the sombre solemnity of the aftermath of Muslim funerals, so to hear vibey gospel music and the chatter of relatives on lawn chairs filter through our bedroom curtains was something of a novelty.

Our neighbour was considerate enough to ask us beforehand if her guests could park on the area just outside our house.

Of course, it’s the neighbourly thing to do. We pardon the inconveniences.

Quid pro quo.

I also live across the road from a recently built mosque in a neighbourhood that, during apartheid, was classified as a whites-only suburb.

With the growing number of Muslims in the area, every Friday, cars choke both sides of our street for the Jumuah prayer.

One of the other neighbours has short driveway pillars placed along the grassy embankment outside his fence.

Whether his decision was motivated by a Stonehenge design aesthetic or a desire to not have people park outside of his house, we can’t say for sure.

If he ever required the use of our space for extra parking, that would be okay too.

While we aren’t the type of neighbours who gossip and philosophise with each other over the boundary wall, it’s a convivial non-complicated relationship. Like nice, friendly Muslims, we send over small gifts at Eid, wave and nod at each other, are polite to their dogs and go about living as quietly and non-disruptively as possible.

Our neighbourhood is mild, middle-class and multiracial.

An impossible scenario 30 years ago, when the house we now live in was built (complete with an outside Bantu toilet in its blueprints).

An old blueprint of our house in Ridgeway, Johannesburg South.(Saaleha Bamjee-Mayet)
An old blueprint of our house in Ridgeway, Johannesburg South. (Saaleha Idrees Bamjee)

And while I can’t speak for those less fortunate or the well-monied, where the balances are still so severely skewed, the middle is where it’s at.

It’s where me and my black and white neighbours are at.

In the middle, all together.

Saaleha Idrees Bamjee is a freelance wordworker/IdeaGirl who also dabbles in writing, rhyming/speaking words, crafting, upcycling, cooking, and peak-time-traffic karaoke. This post was first published on her blog Electric Spaghetti. Connect with her on Twitter