Leave or die

Last month, the Zulu monarch made a public statement in which he compared ‘foreigners’ in South Africa to “amazeze” (lice or fleas) and exhorted them to pack up and go home. While many South Africans expressed shock and disgust at these utterances, with several making comparisons to hate speech during the Rwandan genocide in which Tutsis were routinely referred to as cockroaches, King Goodwill Zwelithini has claimed that he was quoted out of context, and the South African government has taken no action against him.
South Africa's Equality Act allows for prosecution in cases of hate speech and incitement to violence, while Article 3 of the UN convention against Genocide also makes provisions for “direct and public incitement to commit genocide”.
Currently, several of South Africa's peri-urban settlements and urban business districts are awash with xenophobic sentiment and mob violence, with South Africans attacking, looting and even killing nationals of other countries, most of them from other parts of Africa or from South Asia.
Savagery: With horrifying images and poignant victim testimony making international headlines, the Zuma administration, initially slow to react, has finally started to speak out against the savagery.
But it is important to note that the mealy-mouthed language and qualified statements by the president and others have actually done little to curb the madness.
In one statement, President Jacob Zuma urges “our people to treat those who are in our country legally with respect and Ubuntu”. The qualifier of ‘legally’ implies that those who are here illegally need not be accorded the same respect. Similarly, on a Zulu-language news broadcast on the national broadcaster on Sunday, Zuma's address can be loosely translated as: “We realise that there are people living here who are illegal, we also know that there are people who take jobs from other people, however we need to fix [resolve] this matter.”
While it is undoubtedly true that some of the frustrations that have fuelled xenophobic violence are rooted in socioeconomic inequality and the high unemployment levels among South Africans (between 40 and 65 percent according to various statistics), the president's remarks in the current context are certainly unhelpful and possibly inflammatory.
Equally, there has been little attempt by officials to acknowledge that the abject living conditions of millions of poor South Africans and the lack of social services, is a contributing factor, particularly in a context of gross corruption and kleptocracy within government circles.
Many people outside the country are puzzled by this black-on-black violence, while others question whether it has its roots in the past, when the apartheid government resourced one group of black South Africans to fight another in a horrifying proxy war that led to brutal and indiscriminate killings on both sides.
Certainly there is a sense among some South Africans that we tend to solve our problems through violence, and that the civil disobedience of the apartheid era, when freedom fighters vowed to make the country ungovernable, has carried over into the democratic era.
Many among us believe that intimidation, looting and violence are still legitimate tools of political expression, while others are merely opportunistic when they join in the looting and attacks.
Atmosphere of impunity: Unfortunately, the tacit acceptance of such attitudes at high levels of government, and the desultory action by the police and criminal justice system, has resulted in an atmosphere of impunity, particularly when antipathy of immigrants is expressed.
Excerpted from: ‘Leave or die: Choice facing immigrants to South Africa’.
Courtesy: Aljazeera.com