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The Trouble with South Africa

Written by Peter Idwasi
Monday, 09 June 2008
News filtering out of South Africa is troubling to say the least. People from other Africans countries are under attack here. And it is not a new phenomenon. News paper reports that I have read provide details of the xenophobic attacks dating back to the 1990s. The reports identify the victims as Somalis, Mozambicans, Zimbabweans, Nigerians, Malawians, Congolese, Ethiopians and Kenyans, among other Africans. The fact that all these people are black African migrants points to the existence of racialised xenophobia. South Africans have targeted black African foreigners, discriminating them, calling them derogatory names and abusing them. Black immigrants have chosen to establish Spazas (dukas) in townships to avoid congestion in cities such as Johannesburg, Pretoria, Cape Town, Durban and Port Elizabeth. Immigrant businessmen opt to invest in townships because it requires relatively smaller amounts of initial capital investment. Lack of credit facilities to enable immigrants to put up businesses in major towns is also a major impediment. Accessing credit requires legal documents that are difficult to obtain due to the bureaucracy and inefficiency of South Africa’s Department of Home Affairs (DHA). Obtaining any legal documents is an exercise that can test one’s patience, even the South African citizens. A case in point is that of my brother in-law who is married to a second-generation South African immigrant from Europe. Two years of pursuing a work permit has been fruitless. For the couple, getting a passport for their new-born child is proving to be another headache judging from the endless trips they have made to the DHA. Each visit can take a whole day with piling requests for documentation. Documents are awash with clerical errors that question the skill of the government officials that handle the papers. Then there are the endless queries that the ministry officials bombard their clientele with. By the look of things, the officials are out to frustrate anyone who steps into government offices. When visiting metropolitan cities in this country, one cannot help but notice the opulence that characterises South Africa. The majestic houses, office parks, restaurants, cars, malls, put those in North America to shame. Rich South Africans drive top of the range, brand new Mercedes Benzes, BMWs and Volkswagens models. These types of vehicles account for nearly half the cars on South African roads. These executive toys (luxury cars) cost more in dollar than their equivalent in the United States. On a good day, the leading Mercedes Benz dealership in Pretoria sells more that twenty cars. Most of the properties and businesses are owned and run by Caucasians, never mind the fact that they form only 14 percent of the population. This minority group also owns vast farms that sprawl miles upon miles in the countryside. After the 1994 independence, there has not been any concerted effort to address the issue of land distribution, a common eyesore in many African countries, including Kenya and Zimbabwe. Many indigenous South Africans lack an equivalent of “Ushago” – rural homes like we have in Kenya. A significant section of the population still lives in the apartheid-era townships in tiny plots of land just enough to fit their houses. There is growing frustration that South Africa’s economic miracle has touched very few. Unemployment in South Africa is close to 40 percent and most, if not all, of the employed are concentrated in townships. In some quarters former President Nelson Mandela is viewed as a “sell out” for agreeing to work with his former oppressor in maintaining the status quo and leaving the masses in same position as they were before the fall of the apartheid. Some people think that expulsion of the colonizers and creators of apartheid would have been the better solution. However, it is good to remember that kicking out people forcefully may lead to another Zimbabwe, where a massive, hard-to-fill void was left in the system. Additionally, South Africa has a serious shortage of human resources as a result of the long-lasting discrimination against blacks during the apartheid that destabilized the socioeconomic structure in Southern Africa. The post-apartheid school system is in dire need of reforms. During the apartheid time schooling was tailored to misinform and miseducate black children. For instance, it is not uncommon to hear one say that “I am going to Africa” when leaving to visit another African country. The apartheid school system taught South Africans that their country was not part of the African continent. The apartheid teachers painted Africa as negative and uncivilized, which could explain why South Africans in the townships have a negative perception of the rest of Africa and its people. Crime, which is rampant in South Africa, can be partly attributed to the unemployment and the corruption-plagued South African Police Service (SAPS). At less than five percent, South Africa has the lowest conviction rate for violent crime among the nations that track this statistics. Almost half of the convicted felons face sentences of more than ten years. South Africa’s overburdened penal system is one of the largest prison systems per capita in the world. Given these grim facts, those who live in the informal settlements have resulted to vigilantism and extrajudicial killings in dealing with their frustrations that are often directed towards the wrong group of people, usually other African migrants. The current crop of leaders seems to have no connection with the masses they represent and the newly elected ANC leader Jacob Zuma (JZ) has stepped in to fill that void. The existing political leadership under Mbeki seems to have abdicated its responsibility as seen from the current stand-off regarding the election crisis in Zimbabwe. The Speaker of the South Africa’s National Assembly Baleka Mbete was quoted as saying that the situation in Zimbabwe "cannot be compared with the deteriorating humanitarian situation in other parts of the world" and therefore could not make it to the agenda of the Inter Parliamentary Union meeting that was held in Cape Town last month. South Africa needs put her act together and address issues such as corruption, inequity, overdue reforms of education and judicial systems, as well as government departments like DHA just to name a few items in a long list. The 2010 World Cup to be hosted in South Africa is just around the corner. South Africa can use the World Cup to demonstrate that there is a lot of good in Africa. This could be a starting point in reshaping the continent’s image -- a small but significant step towards African Renaissance.