After xenophobic attacks, S. African government blasted for tardy response

JOHANNESBURG — Reymond Mapakata was on his bicycle earlier this week, pedaling his way toward this city’s central business district. A few days before he’d received a phone call about a Zimbabwean furniture maker who’d been attacked by a South African mob, and Mapakata was on his way to investigate.

It was not a straightforward mission. First there was a detour via Park Station, where police were rounding up a group of foreign traders and demanding their papers. “You see? They just ask for money,” said Mapakata, shaking his head. “They’ve been doing it long time.”

Next he went to check on a friend, a Zimbabwean tailor taking refuge at the Central Methodist Church, stopping first to exchange fist bumps with a few Rastafarian barbers. Along the way he was asking questions: Any news? Any incidents to report? On the sidewalk he paused to bear-hug a burly Nigerian man.

“No xenophobia?” asked Mapakata.

“Everything is fine,” said the man, with a weary smile.

Mapakata is a volunteer for Peace Action, a nongovernmental organization that since 2010 has worked to monitor, document and report incidents of violence against foreign nationals in South Africa. The group is part of a grass-roots network that has emerged in response to xenophobic attacks across the country — a recent wave of which left seven people dead — and the government’s failure to address their underlying causes. For many immigrants in South Africa, xenophobia is not simply an issue that flares up during periodic outbreaks of violence, but is a fact of daily life, part of a pattern of threats, harassment and government negligence.

“Xenophobia is entrenched in the institutions of South Africa,” said Marc Gbaffou, chairman of the African Diaspora Forum, an organization that works with some 30 immigrant and South African communities around the country.

Along with responding to specific xenophobic attacks, Mapakata’s group deploys monitors to places where its workers say foreigners are most vulnerable. This includes government offices, such as the Department of Home Affairs and the country’s refugee centers, where poor migrants are often denied services and bullied for bribes; hospitals, which, according to activists, recently began illegally demanding cash payments in advance from foreign patients; and the streets of inner-city Johannesburg, where foreign shopkeepers and street traders are often harassed by the police.

The group’s work, according to its founder, the Rev. Paul Verryn, was born out of the belief that consistent engagement with local communities and law enforcement is the only way to break a cycle of violence against foreigners that experts say began to gain momentum in the early 2000s. “It’s very clear that when communities have some kind of monitoring or awareness-raising [in place] … even though there are threats, they don’t materialize,” said Verryn. 

The recent unrest was triggered by comments made by Zulu king Goodwill Zwelithini, who reportedly urged all foreigners last month to return to their countries. After two weeks of unrest in the traditional Zulu homeland of KwaZulu-Natal, the violence spread last week to Johannesburg. In 2008, a similar outbreak there left more than 60 dead and displaced thousands.

For many of the migrants who come to the “rainbow nation” with dreams of a better life, their first stop is this rough-and-tumble city. Mapakata, who was born in Zimbabwe, came to Johannesburg in 2008 to “search for green pastures,” he said, only to find that “the situation you ran from is better than the situation you find here.” Like many migrants, he soon found himself living on the streets, preyed on by criminals and harassed by the police. After being stopped by cops one day in 2008, his passport was confiscated and he was sent to prison. While thousands of other migrants in South Africa were being displaced by xenophobic violence that year, Mapakata spent five months behind bars.

While discontent within the rank and file of the ruling party has grown in recent years, allegiance to the ANC runs deep for the many South Africans with memories of the liberation struggle, as well as for a youth population that has effectively grown up under one-party rule. In the poor, crowded townships, where most of the xenophobic violence takes place, competition for scarce resources is fierce, and it is generally harder to hold elected officials accountable than to place the blame on foreigners. “Xenophobia starts in people’s minds,” said Erasmus, “and it grows with a lack of education and a lack of understanding.”

Experts say that the government needs to do more to address those misconceptions by creating a long-term policy of education and integration. On the ground, civil-society groups perform vital outreach to welcome new arrivals — many of whom are fleeing war and political violence — while fostering greater dialogue between immigrant and South African communities to change the negative perceptions of foreigners. “You have migrants who are lecturing in universities. You have migrant doctors who are saving lives of South Africans on a daily basis,” said Gbaffou, of the African Diaspora Forum. “But all these stories are not told to the basic South Africans.” Through community workshops, Gbaffou said, his group has had great success, even in the poor, troubled townships that are most threatened. “[In] communities where we are working, people have really been welcoming the initiatives,” he said. The greatest challenge, he added, was the lack of resources to do more.

Many activists say progress, however incremental, is being made. The police were widely praised for their vigorous response to the violence, while Erasmus noted that there’s been “much more of a commitment to prosecute” perpetrators after widespread disappointment over the lack of prosecutions in the wake of the 2008 attacks. “There needs to be a deterrent factor,” she said. “If people are not prosecuted, then this will happen again.” On Tuesday Johannesburg launched a hotline for victims to report xenophobic attacks — a move that was lauded by activists, who noted that many members of vulnerable communities are afraid to report problems to the police. Civic groups, meanwhile, continue to put pressure on the government to address what the LHR calls “systemic and glaring deficiencies in the asylum system.” 

Perhaps most importantly, activists, community leaders and everyday citizens have come together in a resounding show of solidarity against the violence, taking heed of Verryn’s comments that “all citizens of this country have a responsibility to be on red alert.” At a recent community gathering in Orange Farm, a poor township that was unaffected by the latest violence, one bishop told Verryn that leaders of both South African and immigrant communities joined to say, “we will not tolerate xenophobia in any way.”

“It’s not all doom and gloom,” said Verryn.

Still, after years of simmering tensions, change will not come overnight. Late in the afternoon on Wednesday, Mapakata arrived at an abandoned building that housed up to 600 squatters, mostly from Zimbabwe. It was from here that he’d received reports of the furniture maker who’d been attacked. Neighbors, though, said the man hadn’t been heard from in almost a week. The rooms were dark, lit only by the embers of burning cigarettes. A somber man in cargo pants came forward, punched a number into his bulky mobile phone and frowned when the call dropped. Mapakata thanked him and shook his hand. Scrawled onto the wall in black marker were the words “Food. One love. Freedom. Peace.”

Standing outside, Mapakata squinted into the late-day sunlight. He was preparing to bike back to Kensington, a suburb where he rented a room and picked up occasional work as a cameraman. Sighing, he vowed to take up the case again later in the week. “When you’re migrating, step by step,” he said, “you don’t just reach your destination at the same time.”