BY JOSIAH MUCHAROWANA
The flames have died down but the embers are glowing. This is how I feel as an immigrant in South Africa, bewildered by xenophobic attacks that claimed dozens of lives in May this year. About 55,000 people were left homeless, and an unknown number fled the country as their lives were in grave danger.
When I arrived in Joburg from Zimbabwe late last year I had no ‘proper papers’ and no real money. I thought the streets would be paved with gold and when a friend phoned to ask me what the city was like I said: “There are guns, goons, criminal gangs and gorgeous women.”
South Africa contrasted sharply with Zimbabwe. It has been dubbed the “rainbow nation,” that alone made it a ticking bomb when racism, ethnicity, tribalism nepotism and all other negative “isms” were concerned.
In May this year I was working in a factory and could spit a few words in local languages. I was bracing myself for my first Joburg winter when violence erupted in Alexandra, a ghetto township.
Alex, as it is affectionately known, had been home to many foreigners trying to eke out a living. It became a hotbed of violence with killings becoming the order of the day. The ghetto became the vortex of a wave of barbaric violence that spread like fire across other provinces of South Africa.
Hordes of machete and baton-wielding South Africans sang themselves hoarse and danced themselves lame as a crescendo against foreigners rose. Even the media glibly called the attacks ‘xenophobia’, a world likely to invoke ghastly memories for those who bore witness to the grotesque deeds.
The greatest sin committed by us foreigners was taking South African jobs. We were blamed for the high crime rate in the country, we ate South African food and put heavy strains on service delivery by competing with the locals.
As a Zimbabwean running away from the political tyranny of Robert Mugabe’s misrule I had come to SA hoping for a better life, better friendships – only to realise I had jumped from the proverbial frying pan into the fire.
It is true that if you cry, you cry alone but when you laugh, the world laughs with you. As I see it, these national borders were created by colonial masters and as long as I am in Africa, I am at home – period.
The attacks have been an eye-opener, not only to SA, but to the world at large. Fellow world leaders must borrow a leaf. A friend in need is a friend indeed.
Desmond Tutu, SA Nobel Peace Prize Laureate said, “Immigrants and asylum seekers are not animals, they are humans.”
Post published in: News