Violence in South Africa: Reminiscent of the apartheid regime?

As a South African, I write this with shame in my heart and blood on my hands. I am sitting here reflecting on the dark days of 2008 when xenophobic violence spread through the country. We did what we could to improve the situation. We donated food, called our friends who may have been in danger and then we went on with our lives. Today I am fielding questions and concerns from all over the world about the state of my, once beautiful, rainbow nation.

The National Police Commissioner recently announced the formation of joint operational centres to “coordinate response to the unrest”. I was taken by the use of the word “unrest” as this word takes us back to the bad old days of the 1980’s when the Apartheid regime used it to describe black protests. Those were the days when violence and bloodshed were a part of our DNA.

In the last few days, six black foreign nationals and one South African has lost their lives in the most gruesome violence. Images of a human body burning on the streets of Durban has been going around, making our streets resemble an apartheid war zone. The violence started after King Goodwill Zwelithini, an influential person amongst the Zulus, denounced foreigners, saying they should “pack their bags” and leave.

Xenophobia: The King is said to have told followers in a speech that foreigners were ‘lice’ and ‘ants’ and should be expelled from South Africa – a charge he denies, saying it was bad translation [Image credit: AFP/Getty Images]

The King has said the media misinterpreted him but the masses of those who are unemployed have taken to the street, attempting to wipe out those who they deem as foreign. These people being entrepreneurs from Nigeria, mothers from Malawi, teachers from Zimbabwe and professors from the Congo. They have heeded the King’s call and are looking to get rid of the “Kwerekwere” from a country where people are frustrated having suffered for years from high levels of unemployment, where poverty and crime has reached endemic proportions, and where those in power have done little but line their own pockets.

They have turned this frustration into an anger that is so strong they are prepared to burn and kill their neighbours – the people who teach their kids, those they buy their groceries from, and the very people they used to worship with. As a South African, I will be the first to admit that the majority of my people are peace loving and, although, we come from a violent past, we are not violent people. But certain members of our communities have distorted this image and have committed the most atrocious acts of violence against the very people who harboured us safely during the struggle for freedom.

The brutal murder of Mozambican man Emmanuel Sithole in a township near Johannesburg was captured on camera. Zwelithini has been blamed for sparking outbursts of xenophobic violence like this [Image credit: James Oatway/ REX Shutterstock]

What is perhaps most surprising about this xenophobic violence is that it is afro-phobic in nature. Nobody is looting the Chinese owned shop or trying to burn down the British owned mine. They are targeting black Africans. These are vulnerable black migrants who fall under the same protection that our constitution offers us, where it reads that South Africa belongs to all those who live in it – not that South Africa belongs to all those who have citizenship.

The government has responded with heavy policing, which is possibly increasing the potential for violence. The hope was that our government would have learnt from the first round of violence in 2008, acknowledging the best way to ease tensions would be with dialogue, not more force. But lessons have not been retained and what the Government cares about the most is our international reputation – a reputation that is now lying in ruins in the minds of those in the rest of Africa, and no doubt the rest of the world. I imagine Madiba crying, crying for his people to find the peaceful ways he tried to show us on so many occasions.