20 May 2008: Feature Article: Xenophobia, Conspiracies and the Absence of Leadership, Jakkie Cilliers

20 May 2008: Xenophobia, Conspiracies and the Absence of Leadership

 

The response by the South African government to the riots against foreigners in Alexandra and other townships follows an established pattern. Having acknowledged the deeply held xenophobia that apartheid inculcated in our society, government`s reaction reverts to type in the search for scapegoats and cop-outs. Instead of leadership and engaging with the root causes of social turbulence, unrest and crime, we are in search of a conspiracy, a third hand, the organizers behind ...

 

All social turbulence is organized in some manner, but I doubt if the National Intelligence Agency that has been deployed to investigate recent events will be able to come up with anything more substantial than that revealed in their investigations into the service delivery riots during 2007. The tragic events in Alexandra have now spread much wider, affecting a number of townships, mostly in and around Johannesburg. Actually the reasons for these developments are not dissimilar to why the government`s crime prevention policies have not succeeded. It relates first to leadership, secondly to policy and thirdly to implementation. The three are closely related.

 

In times of trouble, political leadership is about clear commitment and the communication of that commitment through visible engagement and action in the affected area – displaying understanding and concern - rallying the government and others to a common cause. Compare, for example, the response of the Myanmar regime after Cyclone Nargis to that of Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao in the aftermath of the earthquake in northern China. Jiabao was on the ground, visible and engaged within a matter of hours, talking to people, visiting the affected areas, ensuring that the rapid response of the Chinese military reached the most affected areas. In Myanmar the military regime have tried to bluff their way out of the crisis – pretending it never happened. In South Africa only ANC President Jacob Zuma has addressed the escalating violence in any practical manner (in Mamelodi) as the country`s president remained engaged in high-level economic discussions in San Lameer with his International Investment Council, then dispatched the Government Communications and Information System to communicate that the intelligence services will uncover who is behind the violence before appointing a panel to look into the attacks. Whether action against corruption (in selected cases), power outages, crime or engagement in Zimbabwe, South Africa desperately needs presidential and cabinet level accountability and leadership – leadership prepared to demonstrate a real and palpable concern about the unacceptable violence and intimidation now so publicly evident.

 

In policy terms the choices made over successive years are coming home to roost – in many instances a mirror image of the reasons for our inability to impact decisively upon crime levels. Borderline security has all but collapsed with the withdrawal of the military from those duties, and the police have been unable to replace the previous commando system in the provision of security in rural areas. Rural land reform is a mess, aptly illustrated in the recent report by the Centre for Development and Enterprise (Land Reform in South Africa – Getting back on track) that unpacks the failures in land restitution and land reform. Precipitously, the report concluded that the economic viability of many rural regions of the country is under threat, and that there could be serious negative spill-over into the broader economy and society. In effect, poor policy and failed implementation on land reform has forced poor black people to urban areas rather than create viable farming communities. Local government and schooling is not making progress and with the exception of social grants, poverty appears to be deepening rather than easing amidst a conspicuous consumer culture that accentuates relative deprivation.

 

The lack of control over persons entering the country illegally has been accentuated by the near-collapse of the Department of Home Affairs. Originally used as a pawn in the efforts to co-opt and then emasculate Inkatha Freedom Party leader Mangosuthu Buthelezi, the management and systems of the Department has been allowed to deteriorate to a degree where it is difficult to see how it can be turned around. South African identity documents can be bought quite readily and our passports are internationally suspect.

 

At least the myth of `no crisis in Zimbabwe` while millions of people have fled that country to South Africa has been exposed for the nonsense that it is. Poor South Africans living on the margins of survival in squatter communities in and around our cities find that Zimbabwean refugees and illegal`s are often better qualified and prepared to work for lower wages than the protected and unionized domestic labour force. Perhaps now South Africa will wake up to the fact that the crisis in Zimbabwe is a regional calamity that has a direct impact upon this country and that a resolution of that problem will also ease domestic pressure.

 

And so one could carry on.

 

The result is frustration, social tension, and eventually violence amongst marginalized communities who suffer real deprivation from rising food and transportation costs, while the price of their labour is undercut by the services of illegal migrants and refugees. Something eventually has to give – and now it has. In this conspiracy of poor governance and lack of accountability the government is unable to manage the people entering the country due to social turbulence and poverty in the region. It provides limited effective social control inside the country. And the perception is that service delivery is faltering across virtually every sector (with a few exceptions here and there) while a small, connected elite get richer by the day. In the absence of leadership able to provide effective direction and to focus on solutions instead of problems, politicians tend to do the same all over the world – search for scapegoats and cop-outs.

 

Jakkie Cilliers, Executive Director, ISS Pretoria, South Africa