'Xenophobic’ Violence in South Africa More Than Coincidental

 

By Yazir Henri and Anis Saleh

 

While it is alarming, it is not altogether coincidental that South Africa is experiencing this type of ‘xenophobic’ violence at this particular time. It will not be strange if this violence escalates and evolves toward violence against ‘other’ local ‘ethnic or colour’ groups in the not so distant future. The current violence is tantamount to an advanced phase associated very closely to the normalised violence happening in poor peri-urban and peripheral zones around South Africa’s urban centres all the time.

 

There is undoubtedly a direct link between this violence and the ever deepening impoverishment among already poor South Africans. The projection into the future of this bi-social ill is bleak given the inability of relevant state actors to respond effectively to this particular crisis and suggests that the ‘xenophobic’ violence in South Africa could easily resurface and may well be replaced, in the future, with more intensive internalised violence directed at the self and against groups locally identified as ‘other’. What is certain in this case is the violence in South Africa will not vanish and it will not be wished away. We all know that the normalised violence in South Africa is not just a result of an extreme conditionality of impoverishment but that it is also the result of the previous socio-economic policies forced onto those people who today make up South Africa’s most poor. Structural abjection did not arrive overnight; it was sanctioned and actively promoted by the Apartheid state.

 

If we accept this as true then a solution to this evolvement of the violence - with the correct amount of political will - must also be engineered. It is possible to counteract both the violence and the poverty at the same time. Solutions to this end continue to be hampered by policy approaches separating the alleviation of poverty from the stemming of the violence, despite there being common cause between academics, public servants and politicians with regard to the correlation between violence and impoverishment. Both impoverishment and violence must be directly and practically addressed together with specificity and coordination. Programmes for uplifting the poor should be creatively developed and affected as a matter of urgency. People in this country should not again be lulled by the calm appearance of what is generally accepted as the violence of normality since it is in its very nature radical. If this evolution continues on its current trajectory it will be become even more dangerous. It is crucial that the solution to the violence, including xenophobic violence, not be limited to protecting the current victims but also extended to uplifting the offenders.

 

If one looks at the front page of the Daily Voice everyday it is not difficult to wonder whether the poor on the city periphery exist in a state of normalised conflict. We perceive both forms of the current violence: that which has been normalised and the ‘xenophobic’ violence emergent from this context as symptomatic of radical levels of impoverishment layered over and constructed over time through violent systematic oppression. Severe levels of impoverishment caused legally and with the electoral sanction instituted administratively through policies executed during three very violent and aggressive political systems: Colonialism, Slavery and Apartheid. During these three systems the people who are today the most poor were forced into the now urbanised bio-social landscapes of South Africa. Here the vast majority of people have been driven into a place of constant emergency, temporality and hopelessness. All three of these factors contribute to further normalising the violence among the poor, against themselves and against ‘others’, now competing with them for basic survival in rapidly deteriorating economic circumstances.

 

Right now impoverishment among the urban ‘black’ poor is being intensified by the escalation of the price of oil and petrol. Related price increases include bread, maize meal, paraffin and transport that have direct impact on the ability of those living in this abject economic context to survive, daily deepening the experience, the feeling and the reality of life in emergency and temporality - more importantly it feeds the hopelessness. Over the last few years the price of oil and petrol has escalated dramatically. All basic commodities have in turn increased by almost fifty percent and in some cases more. The implication of this increase in the prices of commodities means a gross and rapid reduction in the affordability levels amongst the poor. In some instances affordability levels are 75% of what it was last year. This, together with an uncaring public policy toward the same poor, the lack of service delivery and failure of municipal and state structures to spend their budgets on delivering basic help is a recipe for trouble.

 

This has been exacerbated further by the ‘unemployability’ rates among the urban poor not improving significantly. The hike in lending rates and the simplistic, multiple and myopic calls by the reserve bank to simply tighten our belts makes it even more difficult for those who have no belts to tighten. His calls could quite easily be interpreted as tightening the noose around one’s neck instead of the belt around one’s waist.

 

The inability of the state and private sector’s key economic and fiscal role players to collectively and actively take responsibility is a key weakness in providing both moral leadership and sound economic policy. A balance must be struck between economic and social mores in order for policy to effectively address the consequences of South Africa’s fiscal reality and its impact on those most poor who directly bear the brunt of the backward slide of our economy. At the very least there should be a review of the reserve bank governor’s mandate in order to allow for the governor to engage the causes of inflation more holistically. There should be a critical exploration of how the private sector - particularly the banks those prospectors looking for quick returns, and industry cartels and monopolies who profiteer without considering the longer term damage being done to our economic and political future. This has been uncovered to be the case with the bread industry recently.

 

To this end, the banks at the very least have to be made to share the burden of this problem. Harsher legal mechanisms should be put in place forcing these cartels and monopolies to pay more than just fines - those who they have stolen from over long periods of time need to be factored into the laws governing their culpability and monetary redress.  It should not be so easily accepted that the way forward has no alternatives and that the only solution to our problems is to squeeze the poor and the lower middle classes harder.

 

It is important to condemn the violence enacted upon refugees and African migrants from north of South Africa’s borders. Direct and quick relief must be provided in its wake. The State must improve its capacity to manage this disaster more humanely. It is, however, as important to also address the context in which this violence happened. The violence has in very practical ways worsened the conditions of a people always already living in conditions of economic and social abjection. Individuals and groups who committed the violence have worsened their own material conditions in the shot to medium term. Importantly it must also be remembered there are people living under these hard conditions who did not participate in the violence and are now worse off because of it. The looting of shops, the burning and killing of refugees and migrant workers have added another more immediate psychological, social and economic dimension to an already bad situation. The absence of the services these businesses provided specifically increases the distance traveled and the price paid for basic survival items for locals, whilst destroying entire livelihoods for individuals who travelled so far escaping an economic and social situation worse than the one we describe in this article.

 

In conclusion, inviting in the army to halt the ‘xenophobic’ violence may have been necessary for temporary relief but it will not denaturalise violence, nor will it resolve the structural problems affecting the poor in South Africa. This heavy-handed approach continues with the structural and systemic policy of using the might of the state to create temporary ‘law and order’ whilst avoiding to ask itself the more serious questions of how and why this came to be. Care should be taken not to victimise those who live in severe poverty and experience severe levels of destitution on a daily basis and who are unable to find their way in South Africa’s new political economy any further. Government is in the unenviable position of sliding on a very slippery slope - using excessive power and force against those who are victims in their own right. The state should be careful not to feed the violence by adding another layer to the violence, as we have seen in the Hout Bay area where there was active resistance to the state’s policing apparatus entering Hout Bay’s peripheral zones and ‘informal’ settlements.

 

Now that the violence has abated and the situation more or less calm, the state needs to act urgently in more humane and consultative ways to improve the conditions at the root of this violence in order to avoid a repetition. Several short- to medium-term interventions are immediately necessary. Among first steps, and in addition to relief for the humanitarian crisis facing those displaced by the violence, more affirming public economic empowerment initiatives should be created directly impacting the poor in order to develop individual and collective self-sustainability. In the absence of the shops destroyed, publicly-owned shops should be created, empowering locals as well as migrants and refugees to compete in this growing local market. Communication and transport must be made more affordable. Finally, more encouraging efforts must be made to localise and stimulate food production. For this, more autonomous economic and development structures need to be created in partnership with communities affected by the violence. The unspent money in government and municipal coffers must be unlocked and those not delivering must be held accountable. The huge civic effort witnessed at the onset of the violence needs to be multiplied and also directed at stopping the violence that we all so easily come to accept as normal.

 

Henri is the Director at Direct Action Centre for Peace and Memory, Cape Town and Saleh is a PHD candidate in the Department of Environmental and Geographical Science, UCT