Are South Africans our brother’s keepers?

Phakamisa Mayaba

In inimitable polemics on a Newzroom Afrika panel discussion last week, SA Federation of Trade Unions Zwelinzima Vavi gave an uncanny take on what he termed “Ibhadi lomnt’ omnyama,” in response to growing calls for illegal immigrants to leave the country. 

“The black man’s sorry luck,” to paraphrase the unionist, sees swathes of Africans “drowning in the Mediterranean,” clamouring to get away from liberators who have failed them, right into the clutches of erstwhile colonisers. Wherever in Africa one may go, this is generally how the script reads. And you can’t hope to alleviate the immigration issue here, if you don’t first calm the bedlam ravaging across the continent made up the essentials of Vavi’s reasoning. (I paraphrase because I can’t seem to get hold of the video on streaming platforms).

Of course, migration patterns agree: People tend to gravitate to where opportunity lurks and where law and order prevail. Nobody willingly ups and leaves for a s**thole country. With much of Africa marred by poverty or obliterated by war, this inevitably makes SA an alluring sanctuary to those from more inhospitable climes. Many of these people are leaving behind twisted bodies and gutted homes, bringing with them tales so gruesome that the tellers are even prepared to take their chances with our own petrolbomb-toting vigilantes and trigger happy gangsters. 

As we see unfolding in Ukraine, that is the brutality of war and despair; in the main, it catches one unawares. No time to pack a suitcase, let alone arrange the necessary migration paperwork. One minute you’re sound asleep in bed, the next a shell is going off in your front yard and it’s time to go.

From a purely armchair vantage, then, do the calls for illegal immigrants – whatever their sins – to leave, genuinely take stock of these broader humanitarian realities? With Human Rights Day not so long ago, is much thought given to its deeper underpinnings or is it merely just another off-day to visit the local watering hole? What does an illegal Mozambican from the embattled Cabo Delgado province go back to except to likely find himself staring down the barrel of a bloodthirsty insurgent’s firearm? Or a Somali who’s so desperately walked – subjected to all manner of hostilities along the way – across a dozen countries to get as far away from Mogadishu as possible?

From the Ubuntu scriptures we so often conveniently invoke, this is just, methinks, bad manners on our part.
Illegality equates no more to criminal intent than having the right papers makes a law abiding citizen of a legal migrant, what with the storied accusations of corruption at our home affairs department. From the TV coverage of the recent Dudula Movement campaign, it would seem the internal impromptu vetting distinctions were sometimes blurred. One Indian shopkeeper – accent patently local – stood telling the cameras how his aged mother had been harassed inside his shop. This is the sorry upshot of mob justice: not everybody will agree on the rules, often with disastrous consequences for everyone else.

That said, Vavi’s analysis will no doubt find favour with the chattering classes but one is skeptical that it would convince the man on the street to hurl his burning tyre into the sea. You see, for Sipho and Jabu in Alexandra, because the issues are frustratingly a tad closer to home, they remember bitterly. The Alexandra Renewal Project, “billed,” according to Daily Maverick, “as a joint urban regeneration project involving the local, provincial and national government…But since its launch in 2001, precious little appears to have been delivered” is a particularly sore point. In the intervening years, that township has borne witness to several service delivery protests and xenophobic attacks.
The first of these, in 2008, saw leaders showing up armed with stern promises. Over a decade on and it’s clear that is all they had to offer – promises. Unemployment is on the up, the economy is in a stupor yet daily a foreign national is opening up a spaza, hair salon or selling amagwinya on the corner. A stone throw away pristinely towers Sandton, “the richest square mile in Africa,” a capitalist insult to the dreams deferred of poverty-stricken black Alexandra. 
It must surely be emasculating when hordes of locals are reduced to piecemeal jobs and, comparatively, foreigners seem to – one supposes because they know they are too far away from home to mess things up – getting by rather swimmingly.

The backbone of the township has historically relied on three staple industries; taxis, liquor and the spaza. As far back as 2015 when then small business minister Lindiwe Zulu uttered that infamous surrender; “[Foreigners] cannot barricade themselves in and not share their practices with local business owners” it was clear government had no answers to buffering locals from the looming takeover. Across the country, the spaza is now firmly in foreign hands and gradually, there are indications that sights are firmly set on the liquor trade. These are the things that those on the upper rungs of the social ladder need to climb down to see. These are the small issues that could potentially mean the difference between war and peace in these forgotten spaces. 
On the ground, patience is waning thin. People are smarting over unfulfilled promises, the widening divide between rich and poor and of seemingly waiting on Godot. And as history has shown time and again, when the majority are humiliated, it is only a matter of time before they rise up and unleash their frustration on the weak. We hope this time those in power will proactively tend to the disigruntlement lest we should be subjected to yet another horrific bloodbath and more bodies being burned alive. These are scary times and one hopes that ultimately South Africans will find it in themselves to be their brothers’ keepers.