Black-on-Black War in Johannesburg
The shocking violence against refugees from Zimbabwe has threatened the very fabric of South African society.
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To many foreigners, Africa is a deep dark continent a million miles away that seldom makes the news for any positive reasons. We are a continent divided by borders that were drawn by colonial powers with no regard for tribal or ethnic boundaries that had been in place since time began. We struggle to shake off the effects of colonization as we attempt to cope with a world that is rapidly changing - no easy feat.
At the southern tip of Africa lies the Republic of South Africa, a country alive with possibility, mineral wealth, a fantastic constitution and people passionate about life. Fourteen years after the first free and fair elections ever to be held in our country, we find ourselves facing a new crisis that is threatening the very fabric of our society. Now you may feel that is a little dramatic or extreme but the violence we are currently witnessing by angry mobs against foreigners fleeing neighboring countries cannot be overstated.
Many white South Africans have lived barricaded behind high walls or in security complexes in mainly white neighborhoods have been labouring under the misconception that this murder, rape, assault, thuggery, robbery and brutality (hiding behind xenophobia) was a million miles away. This weekend’s violence in Central Johannesburg was a huge wakeup call for most. The streets and flat lands of Johannesburg exploded this weekend and violence continued to flare up in townships and informal settlements throughout the region. A pictorial essay of the violence is available here from the Times of South Africa.
At least 13 people died over the weekend, hundreds were injured and thousands displaced in what has brought back memories of the worst of the violence we South Africans witnessed in the 1970’s and 80’s. The root of the problem? A country simply unable to house, feed and educate its citizens. A country where jobs are scarce, and food prices are spiraling, as they are around the world. Add to this a largely unstable country to our north with the world’s highest inflation rate of over 150 000%, chronic unemployment, political unrest and a population increasingly desperate to cross the border into South Africa to eke out a meager existence doing work that many locals refuse due to the poor wages.
Townships and ‘informal settlements’ (political speak for squatter camps) - already overburdened and filled well beyond capacity have been absorbing these immigrants daily. Crime is rampant inside and outside the settlements and people (both white and black) are angry. Our president, famous for his ‘quiet diplomacy’ has now become so quiet that even when he does speak, few bother to listen. It is not easy to blame a government you voted into power or officials you elected and so people began to look around externally for someone to blame. The immigrants are the easiest target.
It is difficult not to sympathize with people who feel that the spiraling crime, housing shortages and high food costs are a result of our almost nonexistent border controls.
For the government it is preferable that the foreigners and not their own short comings and policies be blamed for the woes that have befallen their constituents, both from a political and from a public relations point of view.
But nobody could have anticipated or can even remotely condone the level of violence and anarchy that has descended. The police seem unable to stem the flow. Leaders making speeches behind television cameras and large desks are having no impact. Our president’s call for calm will have about as much effect as mine would.
What is desperately needed right now is troops on the ground. Police, army or even the Navy who have nothing to do but polish those submarines our government purchased with the billions of rands that could have been ploughed into housing and job creation. (that debacle is a separate article in itself.
The government must stem the violence first and only then start making speeches about what changes we can expect (and make them quickly, the elections are close). Foreigners surfing the net for accommodation and restaurants as they plan their vacations for 2010 must certainly be having second thoughts, they must be wondering whether they will be subjected to the same violence?
How do we explain to the visitors on whom our economy depends “Not to worry, we only kill Zimbabweans because they took our homes and jobs!”
For how long, these potential tourist and businesspeople may ask, wil the violence restricted to black-on-black and will it spill over to other groups? Are tourists at risk, is the country safe to visit for business or pleasure and what of investment?
Nostradamus I am not, and about the future I will not write. The current violence seems to be aimed only at people who live and work close to those bearing the brunt of the housing and employment crisis. But I can’t help being reminded of the words of Pastor Martin Niemöller (1892-1984) about the inactivity of German intellectuals following the Nazi rise to power and the purging of their chosen targets, group after group.
“In Germany, they came first for the Communists, And I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Communist;
And then they came for the trade unionists, And I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a trade unionist;
And then they came for the Jews, And I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Jew;
And then . . . they came for me . . . And by that time there was no one left to speak up.”
“In South Africa, first they came for the Zimbabweans,
And I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Zimbabwean…”
And so I will continue to speak out and help where I can. Winter, cold, hunger, will soon be added to the misery already befalling these desperate people.
The Coffee Addict’s daily ramblings about a life in South Africa filled with too much caffeine can be found at http://www.toomuchcoffee.co.za/
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25 Comments
rsacan:Outstanding article, that fairly sums up the situation at present.
May 20, 2008 - 6:11 am Jack Okie:The good news is that Thabo says there is no crisis; he’s going to appoint a panel.
The worst thing would be calling out the Defense Force; that would only expose the sorry state into which our armed forces have descended.
Please don’t let this story die.
Odd that you don’t identify the root of the problem (Mugabe) and his enabler (Mbeke). Zimbabwe used to be a prosperous exporter of food, and could be again if the population were not so abused.
Colonial boundaries surely don’t help, but attitudes are much more important. South Africans tolerate their president’s support for a vicious thug - and then complain when the consequences of that support spill over into their country. If South Africans believed the Zimbabweans’ political and economic freedoms were as important as their own, there would be a different result. My country got a lot of grief from the rest of the world for deposing Saddam Hussein, but we believe EVERYONE’S freedom is important and are willing to act on that belief.
May 20, 2008 - 6:55 am Wolf Pangloss:Unfortunately South Africa is paying the price for repeatedly electing the socialist ANC (and its allies in the Communist Party and the militant trade unionis) to government. Socialism has failed everywhere it has been tried, and still the left idiocracy believes with all the force of religious conviction.
Read the history of Rhodesia and Zimbabwe since Mugabe’s election to see what happens next.
May 20, 2008 - 7:14 am MikeT:Your last four paragraphs are all but a direct invocation of Godwin’s Law.
You might not want to face it, but your country needs to keep those immigrants out. If they can flee from their mess, the Zimbabweans won’t be forced to take responsibility for Mugabe. The only way someone is going to bring down his regime and end the turmoil is for Zimbabweans to be left with no recourse but to kill him, kill his main supporters and start fixing his mess.
We have the same problem with Mexico. The reason that Mexico is still the way it is is because it is so easy for Mexicans to flee north. That puts precious little pressure on the Mexicans to fix their own country.
May 20, 2008 - 7:49 am Smarty:We are making things worse by sending food to zimbabwe, we should be sending guns, and blocking Chinese support to the Mugabe regime.
Of course, if we hadn’t been so quick to let our leftists take the lead and drive out the sane white governments of both countries, they would both be better off right now.
May 20, 2008 - 8:32 am Twisiwile:Black South Africans are real fools. Why attack a fellow Black man from Sourthen part of Africa. We are all Bantus. Infact, I am Ngoni by tribe but live in Malawi. I dont have motives to go to South Africa because I am well educated and comfotably work in Malawi. At least I could ve understood them if they ve attacked non-black people: whites, Asians and others. But all forms of violence are unceptable. We are not the heartless Arab suicide bombers; or the heartless bush who start a war killing innocent people on fake intelligency data. South Africans you ve shamed our ancestors. I hear most of you did not go further with your education and thus why you cant get good jobs. Why kill a fellow poor black Bantu fellow. You have ashamed our ancestors. All those South Africans supporting this atrocities in theory and practise should know that this is not a viable solution; migration is here to stay; its a product of both globilisation and regional intergration.
Remember during the apatheid we had South Africans in a number of Sourthen Africans countiries;
May 20, 2008 - 11:37 am Nahanni:Mike T,
We also have the same problem with Americans.
I live in Texas and I am seeing way too many license plates from New York, New Jersey, Michigan, Illinois, California, Minnesota and yes even Massachusetts here. It is like the early 1980’s when half of Michigan moved here.
These people need to go back where they came from and clean up their messes. We do not need them importing the bacillus of high taxing nanny stateism. I don’t care if they can not afford to live in those places anymore and there are no jobs there. THEY were the ones who elected the people who made those places what they are.
May 20, 2008 - 12:37 pm Yang Wei:“We are a continent divided by borders that were drawn by colonial powers with no regard for tribal or ethnic boundaries that had been in place since time began.”
Africans are free to redraw their borders at any time.
May 20, 2008 - 12:42 pm Rubicon:Irrespective of borders, the truth is so long as tyrants are enabled by any government or by any peoples, they will thrive and they will impose their will on others.
May 20, 2008 - 3:05 pm M. Simon:Zimbabwe’s problem is the Robert Mugabe regime that pushes its form of tyrannic socialism on the people.
One said socialism has failed here & everywhere that idiotic concept has been imposed. That is true. Free markets that always leave some in the dust, also always eventually provide the means for those in the dust, to dust off & catch up to the rest. Socialism always creates an atmosphere of do nothing, because tomorrow, someone will stop by with the regular handout!
In addition, there are few or no examples of a socialist leadership that has not become despotic toward its own people.
America could do more. But then every time we “intervene,” we are called imperialists and colonizers. Many now think it may be best to let those screaming deal with their own problems & we only deal with them if they threaten us. That way, we cannot be accused of being the bad guys as always happens!
No one is crying about it, they are just sick & tired of it. So, if “we” are so bad, try the other guys out & see just how happy you will be with their forms of oppression!
Governments can only steal. If they want job creation they could do a little less stealing. That generally works better.
But given the Communist origins of your current politicians what else can you expect.
“Stealing by government has caused a crisis. The answer is to raise the theft rate.”
May 20, 2008 - 4:54 pm dirigible:Thank goodness it can all be blamed on colonialism.
May 20, 2008 - 6:39 pm memomachine:Hmmmm.
“Why attack a fellow Black man from Sourthen part of Africa. We are all Bantus. Infact, I am Ngoni by tribe but live in Malawi. I dont have motives to go to South Africa because I am well educated and comfotably work in Malawi. At least I could ve understood them if they ve attacked non-black people: whites, Asians and others. But all forms of violence are unceptable.”
Well. I’m glad you added that last sentence.
*shrug* What would work?
1. Invade, conquer and annex Zimbabwe by South Africa.
2. Depose and hang Mugabe and his cronies.
3. Divide Zimbabwe into a number of new South African provinces.
4. Establish the new provincial governments using experienced bureaucrats from South Africa.
5. Immediately reduce the South African military, particularly the Navy, to free up cash to invest in the new provinces and reassure other local nations that SA won’t be going on a takeover spree.
6. Ask the USA for a US Navy presence to help guard the coastline and to provide the US with a naval base. It’s rare for the US Navy to not want established bases everywhere.
7. Use the credibility of the SA government, as compared to the Zimbabwe one, to re-establish provincial economies and foreign investment.
The fact is that Zimbabwe isn’t just damaged socially or economically. It’s totally damaged with respect to white investors and foreign investors. Even if Mugabe were deposed it’s clear the replacement government would be far too weak, i.e. NO tax income worth talking about, to either establish authority properly or have the credibility to draw in foreign investors. There is simply no way a Zimbabwe government could reassure investors that the next government elected into office won’t do the same thing as Mugabe. And that’s because the power block that supports Mugabe is too large and well entrenched for a replacement government to deal with.
The SA government, particularly if the military were reformed into an anti-guerilla and peace enforcement force along with a powerful provincial police, could force stability that would draw in investors. Especially if the SA government returned all white owned farms back to their original owners, something the Zimbabwe government would find impossible to do as few whites would trust it.
Let’s face it. Zimbabwe is destroyed and it’s doubtful it could be rebuilt without a massive infusion of Western cash. Something the neither US economy nor it’s voters will support. And who else would?
May 20, 2008 - 6:58 pm Gregory:memomachine: Nonsense. People all over the world can and do perform virtual miracles substantially on their own initiative, provided they are motivated to do it.
Africans, should they choose, can bootstrap themselves into prosperity; I’m not saying it will be easy, nor am I saying that they can do it in isolation, but to a large extent they are not totally dependent on foreign aid. That is to say, they do not need to be.
Problem is, it has to come from within, and there’s plenty of foolishness left in Africa, and the various peoples that populate that continent. And no, not all of it came from colonialism. Not even half, I would say.
Not that I disagree with everything you said; just the last bit.
May 20, 2008 - 8:41 pm Sheila:Gregory - there’s not just foolishness…there’s too much corruption. I no longer contribute to African charities for that reason.
May 21, 2008 - 3:51 am Steve:or the heartless bush who start a war killing innocent people on fake intelligency data
No you just turn a blind eye to a murderous thug who is killing innocents and destroying Zimbabwe. Yeah your much better.
May 21, 2008 - 7:01 am smg45acp:I find the it ironic that the whole world came together to boycott and protest against SA when it had the apartheid government.
But the whole world can’t seem to find the time to protest Mugabe.
The reasons being of course he is black (you can never criticize a black man or you will be called a racist) and he is a communist ( the communist want make everybody equal).
Even now with all the evil this man has done the MSM still tip-toes around calling him what he really is.
If any white non-communist man had done half of the terrible things Mugabe has done there would have been an invasion form dozens of countries to overthrow him.
Was Serbia any where near as bad Mugabe? No, but we bombed them into submission for the terrible crime of fighting terrorism on there own soil.
I’m sorry Africa, but you will have to solve this on your own.
May 21, 2008 - 11:24 am holdfast:Any thing America would do to help you will be interpreted wrong and you will hate us for it.
At the national level, South Africa is a one-party state. Sure the zulus and whites can win some local elections in KwaZulu-Natal and maybe some municipal races elsewhere, but one party states are not really democracy. The ANC was created as a communist front organization, and it remains one to this day. Mandela, for all his faults, worked hard to prevent violence among the various tribes of his country (in this I include British, Afrikaans, Asians and Coloureds as “tribes”), but his sucessors don’t have the charm, the standing or the intelligence to follow-up. The Zimbabwe crisis is just accelerating South Africa’s own problems, but those problems were already there. I’m glad my family got out.
May 21, 2008 - 6:39 pm Mikielikes:I agree with Gregory -
The fact is that any society cannot move forward when they rely solely on the government! The USA is quickly moving in the same direction as we want the State to cover for us on everything from health care to retirement - whatever happened to self-reliance? I’ll be in Namibia again this summer and will no doubt here and see the effects of this to a great extent on peoples ideology as the region groans from thuggery.
Don’t blame anybody but society as a whole. South Africa wanted its chance under black leadership and they have squandered it starting with Mandela! The problems aren’t due to immigrants - it’s the South African boo hoo me syndrome that has held them back. Typical Socialist mantra now that they can’t fix what they said they could if given the Socialist reigns. Good luck - you’re going to need it!
May 21, 2008 - 10:30 pm Henning:Hi dood
I have read this article of yours. Well part of it. What a lot of crap! If whites was a million miles away, then why the hell do we have high fences around our house or moved into secure complexes.
You are using all these funny words like Xenaphobia / Black on black/ anti immigrant violence.
You are missing the point, this is nothing else than plain racism.
The way you and others have written your reports on this situation, tells me you are not from South Africa and you do not know the type of masses or the true feeling behind the attacks.
Before you blame or pass guilt, try looking at the politics of this country and the millions of empty promises made in order to get votes for cabinet members with fat salaries. That is your starting point before you can wander what is wrong with this countries picture.
May 21, 2008 - 11:55 pm Sean:Indeed, Henning. The high walls and security complexes are relatively recent, as are the informal settlements: I can count 5 in my area (southern Cape peninsula) that have sprung up since 1994. Government’s reckless promises of houses, etc. might have something to do with this.
Also, we have a Government more concerned about its ego than its people. There is no need to rehash the Arms Deal scandal, the high-level corruption, and so forth. In a country with crumbling infrastructure, with a population explosion happening in front of our eyes, we have chosen to ignore the need to build and maintain power stations, with its dark and very expensive consequences. Our public transport system is a joke, and promises to get it up and running for the 2010 World Cup are not materialising. Instead, temporary arrangements are being made, so that it can all fall apart again when the tourists go home. A tax base of roughly five million people has to support 48 million, many of whom need start-from-scratch services like running water and basic electricity.
Against this backdrop, foreigners come in in hordes. For the most part, they have nothing but the clothes they came across the border in. They are housed in the squatter camps. They tend to accept lower wages and menial labour, and are sought after: look in the classified pages and see how marketable ‘Malawian’ and ‘Zim’ domestic services are. They open convenience stores. They have money and goods that the established South Africans do not. They are very vulnerable.
SA is, literally and laterally, a broken society. We have ‘achieved’ the highest per capita murder, rape and armed robbery rates in the world. Xenophobia is just one symptom, by no means the first, of the backlash to come.
May 22, 2008 - 2:40 am The Coffee Addict:To all who have read and commented I thank you. Your comments and input are much appreciated.
To Henning, let me assure you that although you may disagree with my assessment and I with yours I was born in Pretoria, grew up in Johannesburg, did 2 years national service, camps in the townships and besides a few holidays abroad have lived my entire life in South Africa.
And allow me to add this from my blog…
So do I keep complaining and lamenting and wondering what is happening in the minds of the people perpetrating this violence or maybe I should go and interview one of the attackers? Maybe I should hear in their words what could possibly cause so much hatred and anger that you can murder a man who yesterday was your neighbour, rape a woman you may have travelled to work with last week and make homeless thousands of innocent children who had no part in the decisions taken by their parents? To me it all seems inconceivable, but then I wake up every morning with food in the fridge, a little money in the bank, two cars in the garage, a job to go to and a school for my children. My father always said “Never judge a man until you have walked a mile in his shoes… that way by the time he realises you are judging him you will be two miles away and have his shoes!” My father is a wise man.
May 22, 2008 - 10:46 am John:The attacks on blacks indicate that the South Africans still need the whites to rule them. It is apparent that the white rulers had not or forgot to teach them some lessons on being brothers keepers. The black South Africans have forgotten that during the apartheid era they were in every country of Africa as immigrants, begging for education, food and shelter. The current attacks on blacks only brought out the barbarism in South African blacks. It shows that they cannot manage their own destinies if any. Mbeki is no different hence he had no time to asses the situation and act decisively. No wonder the whites during the apartheid only kept them in camps and shanties because that was where they belong. The only option open to Mbeki is therefore to send them back there so that peace can rein in Jo burg and South Africa. It is a big shame on South Africans
May 22, 2008 - 2:08 pm