cross posted @ kameelahwrites.

The 21-st century pencil test

As attacks on foreigners intensified and spread across Johannesburg, mobs began pulling people out of shopping queues and forcing them to take “tests” to establish their nationality.

In a practice that recalls the humiliating “tests” used by apartheid officials to classify coloureds as white or black, reports came in that South African mobs were using similar techniques to identify foreigners.

African fears about SA are being confirmed

Betrayal describes the general reaction to the xenophobic attacks in South Africa. Betrayal and disgust. Like Caesar, we turn in shock and slowly reach for the knife in our back, not quite feeling the pain yet. Slowly we look down to our bloodied fingers, then look up to our brother. “Et tu Brute?” And thus, the word “brutal” enters the English language, with fratricidal betrayal.

Long-held fears, justified or otherwise, about South African ignorance and disdain towards other Africans are being confirmed. “I flew from Jo’burg sitting next to an elderly South African to Dakar. On arrival,” the Gambian lawyer continues, “he turned to me and asked, ‘Is Dakar in Africa?’ I was too embarrassed to reply.” Then he notes matter-of-factly: “This is a man who started working as a professional in 1972!”

Mbeki says govt wasn’t warned about attacks

President Thabo Mbeki on Tuesday denied reports that the South African government had been warned of the prospect of xenophobic attacks by the National Intelligence Agency.

Briefing reporters following his meeting with Nigerian President Umaru Yar-Adua, Mbeki said suggestions that the government was warned a year ago about the recent xenophobic violence were false.

“There was no such intelligence reports — they certainly did not come to me,” he said.

The power of positive people

While South Africa reeled in shock this week and the cumbersome machinery of international organisations creaked to life, the most effective responses to the xenophobic attacks came from municipalities, ordinary citizens and faith groups.

Albinos, Long Shunned, Face Deadly Threat in Tanzania

Discrimination against albinos is a serious problem throughout sub-Saharan Africa, but recently in Tanzania it has taken a wicked twist: at least 19 albinos, including children, have been killed and mutilated in the past year, victims of what Tanzanian officials say is a growing criminal trade in albino body parts.

Many people in Tanzania — and across Africa, for that matter — believe albinos have magical powers. They stand out, often the lone white face in a black crowd, a result of a genetic condition that impairs normal skin pigmentation and strikes about 1 in 3,000 people here. Tanzanian officials say witch doctors are now marketing albino skin, bones and hair as ingredients in potions that are promised to make people rich.

Obama’s Victory in Democratic Party Poll Has Continent in a Spin

Until he started making news as a possible contender for the US presidency, Barack Obama, who this week won the Democratic ticket in the White House race, was almost unknown in Ethiopia. Now, he has a huge fan club in the country, with one of his greatest fans being Ms Birtukan Mideksa, former deputy chair of Ethiopia’s opposition Coalition for Unity and Democracy (CUD) party.

UN overstated Aids risk, says specialist

The United Nations has systematically exaggerated the scale of the Aids pandemic and the risk of the HIV virus affecting heterosexuals, claims a leading expert on the syndrome. The numbers of people worldwide with HIV have been inflated and the UN Aids agency has wasted billions of dollars on education aimed at people who are unlikely to become infected, says Professor James Chin, a former senior Aids official with the World Health Organisation. […]Chin will detail his claims this week in London in a meeting hosted by the International Policy Network, a free-market think tank, where he will launch a new report, called The Myth of a General Aids Pandemic.

“Lesotho cannot wait for the UN food summit in Rome to come up with ideas, so it has developed some of its own. Mahaha Mphou does not know much about global economics, but she does know how to grow vegetables. She and the rest of her family of 10 have become some of the most enthusiastic evangelists for a home-grown idea that has almost certainly saved them from starvation.”
[more…]

What’s a keyhole garden? Look at this video.

“According to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) report, issued on 12 June 2007, an estimated 410,000 people of the country’s 1.9 million inhabitants will struggle to meet their basic food needs
due to extensive crop failure after experiencing one of the most severe droughts in the last 30 years. Environmental damage caused by over farming and soil erosion compounds the problems associated with drought.

World Vision and partners has introduced an innovative
pilot project called keyhole gardens, to explore ways of improving the health and livelihoods of people through suitable sustainable farming and water harvesting techniques.

The techniques taught are specifically designed to increase the fertility and water-holding capacities of soil. The introduction of manure, combined with knowledge in how to compost and create double-dug beds and keyhole gardens, for instance, has led to farmers experiencing up to five-fold increases in crop yields.
[more…]”

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Kameelah adds to the discussion on xenophobia in South Africa by linking to a number of articles in Pambazuka News and by making a connection between the violence, poverty and global food crisis.

connected to this food crisis is the rise in violence against immigrants especially in south africa–joburg to be specific though cape town has had it’s share of anti-somali violence………….it certainly breaks my heart to see poor folks turn on each other rather than channeling this anger in a productive way that targets the people and institutions that are more responsible for this crisis than a 20-something zimbabwean fleeing mugabe. but in reality, having not eaten in two days and being unemployed for two months, i really cannot expect a town hall meeting and a civil discussion. folks are hungry and frustrated.

One of the articles in Pambazuka News by Owen Sichone, traces violences across the continent - Nigeria, Uganda, Rwanda - and asks why anyone should be surprised over SA’s response to foreigners. The important point is that Sichone reiterates the connection between anti-immigration, poverty and social inequalities.

So why is Pius “confounded by the fact that Black South Africa had begun to manufacture its own kaffirs so soon after apartheid” ? Like the Biafrans, they have been let done by their leaders. Just look at post-elections Kenya and see the petty bourgeois selfishness that Museveni criticised in his own country and you will understand that South African leaders have not just keep silent about the support they received from the Frontline States (including Nigeria) but that they have not shared the national cake equitably. The inherited Brazilian style gap between rich and poor always creates violence in society. There is still apartheid in post apartheid South Africa and it is not just the foreign Africans who suffer. Indeed the Nigerian doctors and other professionals are more likely to be beneficiaries of the end of the apartheid system than the poor workers whose factories closed down because of the flood of cheaper Chinese goods onto a previously protected market and now have no hope of ever earning wages again.

So let us not portray South Africans as ignorant, ungrateful or just bloodthirsty. The only way to reverse xenophobia, whether in Nigeria, Russia or South Africa is by exposing its roots in social inequalities and joining the struggle against social injustice.

The reasons given by indigenous people for their dislike of immigrants is the same whether in South Africa, Britain, France or the US. They are taking our jobs, our women, they are responsible for increases in the crime rate, they walk off the plane / boat / bus and into a flat, they undermine our labour. Sit on a bus in London and watch when a Somali woman gets on with a pram and a toddler. The hostility is so thick in the air you could cut it with a knife and it’s not just white people who are hostile. The reality is so far from the myth, so how does the myth begin to dominate and feed the hostility and violence? The media creates and uses the myth to either attack one political party’s policies or support another, so in the UK you have a situation where the present Labour government is desperately trying to hold on to power and immigration is the ideal issue to latch on to because it feeds into people’s myths about why they don’t have a job or a flat. You only need one story in the Daily Mail about a Nigerian woman who “heard” you can get a flat easy with a child so went to Nigeria bought a baby for £150 and came back to get a council flat, for all immigrants to be crooks, liars and baby thieves and worse “Africans sell their babies!” Hating and blaming someone you see every day for your poverty is so much easier than facing up to the fact that you don’t have a flat because Thatcher sold everyone the idea of home ownership as opposed to social housing which was never replaced. And now there just isn’t enough to go around and never will be unless a government is elected that will start to build the millions of homes needed - in that sense the chickens cant roost cause they have no home to come back to.

Tags:
South Africa
Immigration

My friend Beauty at “Nigeria What’s New” posted on the violence against immigrants taking place in South Africa and wonders

why bloggers in the diaspora are not screaming about this horrible human rights issue since the story broke on May 1st.

Good point, Beauty after all if this was happening in Spain, France, Britain or any where else in Europe we would be screaming. In fact I was screaming the other day about asylum seekers in Britain. Talk to any African foreigners and they will tell you their own experience of xenophobia in South Africa. But these encounters are superficial and hide the truth. What is happening is far more complex than is being presented in the reports as violence and xenophobia. Nonetheless, these very disturbing videos here and here and here, fit well with the one posted from last week on Race Hate in Russia. More importantly the videos tell us how governments with the support of the media can and have used immigration as a way of deflecting people away from the real issues and their failure to meet the valid expectations of the people.

This article in the Times [A simple recipe for xenophobia] points to a number of factors that have no doubt contributed to the violence.

What caused the terrible scenes unfolding in our country today: children beaten and displaced, women raped and men left with pieces of flesh hanging from their faces, homeless and hungry and desperate?

What led to a situation where young men were unashamed to stand in front of television cameras and say they will kill foreigners?

We should not be surprised. For the ANC, led by Zuma and Mbeki, the chickens are coming home to roost………….

These people are behaving like barbarians because the ANC has failed — despite numerous warnings — to act on burning issues that are well known for having sparked similar eruptions across the globe.

But the bulk of the cocktail comprises the failed state that is Zimbabwe. The country’s economy has collapsed. Its political leaders, security services and agents are looting the treasury. Zimbabweans are fleeing.

The writer, as in the last paragraph, still externalises the violence by bringing it back to Zimbabwe and Robert Mugabe. But it is not just Zimbabweans who are victims of the violence - all Africans are - from townships to universities. In fact the statement only fuels the violence against refugees. Yes clearly there is a struggle for scare resources such as food, housing and jobs but this does not explain everything. The truth lies more in the total failure of the post Apartheid government to bring about meaningful social change for the masses with the country largely remaining in an economic time warp of white rule. The violence is an indictment on the government which has engaged in an outright attack on the poor in urban and rural areas which is reminiscent of apartheid and what people see is more hardship not less.

The media and the government are naming the violence as xenophobia but the reality is that people have reached boiling point after 14 years of dashed hopes and have now turned on the most vulnerable in their communities, refugees, and foreigners to vent their frustration. This in no way justifies the violence but does go some way to explain the fragility of the country.

I would add that progressive shack dwellers’ movements, like Abahlali baseMjondolo in Durban, the Anti-Privatisation Forum (APF) which has members in some shack settlements in Jo’burg, as well as the Western Cape Anti-Eviction Campaign, have always taken a strong position against this violence. Abhalali has always been clear that it welcomes all shack dwellers in to the movement irrespective of where they come from and indeed has hosted men and women from Zimbabwe’s shackdweller communities as well as reached out to the residents as far away as Cite Soleil in Haiti.

It is a tragedy that such attacks are happening in poor working class communities, where the poor are fighting the poor. But there is a clear reason for this. Many in our communities are made to believe that unemployment is caused by foreigners who take jobs in the country – this is simply untrue. Forty percent (40%) of all South African citizens are unemployed and this has been the case for many years. This is not the result of immigrants from other countries coming to South Africa but rather, the result of the anti-poor, profit-seeking policies of the government and the behaviour of the capitalist class. Such massive and sustained unemployment is a structural problem of a capitalist system that cares little about the poor, wherever they are from/live.

Links: Tourista Africana

The Sowetan

Tags:
South Africa
Immigration

The LaunchPad: Where Is Lesotho?

Lesotho is a small nation that is surrounded by the country of South Africa. The King and Queen of Lesotho have invited Johannes Amritzer and Mission SOS to do a Festival for their people. The first Festival was held there in October of 07 and 17 new churches were planted.

This coming week, a second series of meetings will be held there. Here’s a video report of the October meetings and a reminder to pray for Johannes, Peter, and the Mission SOS team this week.

Did the King and Queen really invite these folks to Lesotho for a festival? They said it… what… on TV? They sent an email to invite them? Published the invitation in the paper? Picked up the phone and called them? “We want you to do a festival for our people!”

The clip shows Basotho being healed miraculously. The clip shows the visitors, the healers, through the grace of God, giving sick Basotho their sight back, their legs, their hearing. And it shows the healers insisting that the healees have now been forgiven and saved.

I do not disbelieve in miraculous healing. I have been touched by it. But I disbelieve healers, and this disbelief stems from my conviction that if there is a God, then God is not biased, and will not reveal Him/Herself to a bunch of people at the expense of another bunch of people. This goes to the root of what for me being is all about, and that is if I am and you are, then by God we are. As a result, you can’t have Knowledge and Power if I don’t, and vice-versa, because we are.

If there’s any healing that must go on, it’s not going to be through a bunch of rich visitors to a poor nation. If anything, if Christianity and religion have any meaning, then it must be the opposite, the materially poor must be able to heal the materially rich. Why would God bypass my local preacher and instil in someone I don’t know who comes from a place I don’t know the power to heal me? It’s senseless, albeit dangerous.

N.B: I wasn’t there so I can’t say if collection plates were passed around — but I’d love to know from those who were there.

I wonder if the royal couple did invite these people to Lesotho. If so, then they shouldn’t have. I doubt Basotho need more hoodwinkers at this stage, having enough on a political level as it is. What Basotho do need is the subject of another discussion, but I can stuff it into a nutshell as Work, Political Stability, Economic Vigour and Health and Hygienic Awareness. Plus a little luck from the skies in the form of regular rain.

Did the healees know that their healers have a profitable business behind their action? Who are “the unreached peoples?” And are their melanocytes rather active? (1) Is this about race? Have people with less active melanocytes been reached? (2) It doesn’t seem to be about race, as there has been at least one festival in a European country, Bulgaria. So is this about money? Why are these folks doing this? Do festivals occur in richer, “white” countries? France, England, Italy, America, Spain? If not, why not? Questions and more questions.

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