South Africa: 22,000 minutes of ruinous madness

WHEN four years ago, South Africa's Anglican Archbishop Emeritus and Nobel Peace laureate Desmond Tutu, raised an alarm over the seeming failure of the ANC-led government's much-touted Black Economic Empowerment (BEE) programme, some critics especially those within the Pretoria administration said he was crying wolf.

"We are sitting on a powered keg. We must work like mad to eradicate poverty," the retired fiery Cape Town cleric had warned in a trademark strong language while delivering the Nelson Mandela Lecture in Johannesburg on November 23, 2004. "What is black empowerment when it seems to benefit not the vast majority but an elite that tends to be recycled?" asked Tutu, in the speech, in which he also dismissed the government's housing scheme as "the next generation of slums."

After the lecture, conspiracy theories went to town accusing the retired Archbishop of blasphemy and of unwittingly spoiling the celebration party in a year that South Africa was supposed to be commemorating its 10th anniversary of political independence, and the banishment of Apartheid. President Thabo Mbeki was not amused by the criticism and hit back, saying: "It would be good if those that present themselves as the greatest defenders of the poor should also demonstrate decent respect for the truth."

But less than four years after that prophetic lecture, South Africa has erupted in an orgy of senseless and barbaric xenophobic violence, against nationals of the same African countries to whom South Africa owes so much for its own freedom. Commentators can blame the political crisis in neighbouring Zimbabwe for all they care, but what is happing in South Africa is much more fundamental and deep-rooted. It is an implosive explosion foretold.

The more than 50 immigrants from other African countries killed by the gangsters, that seemingly overwhelmed the South African police, the more than 600 wounded and the tens of thousands now rendered destitute are victims of a domestic socio-economic malaise - the unbearable inequality and inequity - in the erstwhile country of Ubuntu (Zulu for hospitality to strangers), where ironically, strangers are no longer welcome. The violence, which began on May 11 in Alexandra, a poor township north of Johannesburg, soon spread to the main city and the surrounding region, and then to other parts of the country, including Cape Town and the coastal province of KwaZulu-Natal. Gangs of jobless South Africans armed with machetes and firearms descended on the immigrants from other Africa countries - Mozambique, Zambia, Kenya, Malawi and from as far flung as Ghana and Nigeria - whom they accused of stealing jobs and raising the level of crime.

For two weeks, the murderers and destroyers defied appeals from well-meaning South Africans including world statesman Mandela, who urged his misguided compatriots to remember their country's history. The mayhem was such that Methodist Bishop Paul Verryn, described South Africa as being in a state of "war" and called on the government to declare a state of emergency. Thousands of petrified immigrants turned churches and police stations into refugee camps. After much procrastination, the Pretoria government reluctantly called in the armed forces to assist the ineffective police to quell the horror, which Mbeki

himself, later described as shameful, in a rather belated national broadcast.

By the time the government reacted, the damage had already been done - more than 56 innocent lives had been lost and some 100,000 of the immigrants forced from their homes, with tens of thousands of them, especially Mozambicans fleeing back home. Even Zimbabweans, who had fled the economic and political crisis in their own country, felt it was much safer for them to die at home than be subjected to callous execution in South Africa.

Gory footages were shown of unrestrained youths on rampage, killing and maiming, burning, destroying and looting property. The horrifying scenes reminded many of Apartheid era South Africa - fire in Soweto of a different kind - in the 21st century with all the talk about United States of Africa and after more than 14 years of Black majority rule in the so-called Rainbow Nation, the last bastion of Apartheid. From 1994, South Africa did hold so much hope and promise that the world bestowed on it the honour of being the first African nation to host the World Cup final in 2010. But even amid state denial and political grandstanding, critical observers have continuously warned that all is not well with the country.

To begin with, South Africa's crime statistics are awful. In Gauteng Province (Johannesburg and neighbouring Pretoria) alone, some 5,000 murders are committed each year, according to the police. Just last October 19, the nation's internationally renowned reggae star Lucky Dube was killed in an apparent carjacking attempt in front of his son, whom he was dropping off in Johannesburg's southern Rosettenville suburb. Over the past six years, there have been 119,305 reported murders in South Africa,

including 19,202 in 2007. Women's groups estimate that a woman is raped every 26 seconds and a child every 15 minutes in South Africa. The police service gives a slightly lower estimate of one woman every 36 seconds, which is a record even by African standards. In general, contact crimes such as murder, attempted murder, rape, assault and aggravated robbery, are on the high in South Africa, giving the country one of the highest crime rates in the world. According to UN crime statistics, one in three Johannesburg residents has been robbed, with an astounding 250,000 South African residences reporting burglaries in the past year.

The level of insecurity is such that in retrospect, critics who had argued that the hosting right for the 2010 World Cup was granted South Africa more out of sentiment and respect for Mandela, than merit, now feel vindicated. While the crime-infested townships are largely unprotected, the architecture of fear abound even in the wealthy areas of South Africa, such as the northern Johannesburg suburbs, infamous for their high walls and electric fences, hiding houses which are in turn protected by alarm systems, metal grilles, and infra-red sensors. In a country of 49 million people, whose mineral-based economy has been built and largely supported by foreign labour, the presence of an estimated between three million and five million immigrants, should normally pose no serious problem, if government were to run an effective social service delivery system. But instead, poverty was on the increase and the gulf between the poor and the rich widened. Unemployment in South Africa is at 30 per cent and rising, and with up to 20 per cent of the population of townships being non-South African, the immigrants become easy scapegoats for the unfulfilled political promises.

In 1994 when the ANC won the election with Mandela as the president, a new era dawned. But suddenly, the surge in unemployment of both blacks and whites hit the country. Desperation and hunger became the order of the day and many had to device means of survival including stealing. If the Pretoria government needed warning signs before the two-week madness from May 11, it got more than enough. The xenophobic outburst was just the climax; the explosion of bottled-up anger and discontentment by a large segment of the population that felt abandoned and neglected.

An uneasy calm now prevails in the country like the uncertainty after the storm. The displaced, brutalised and traumatised immigrants must be resettled and reintegrated, and long-term solution found to prevent a worse catastrophe.

BEE needs total overhauling. The government must engage all stakeholders to lift the impoverished majority from poverty. After 14 years in power the ANC government ought to have evolved a sustainable programme of service delivery to feed, house, create jobs, and provide health care to citizens. Also, it is not enough to tell the youths that they lack education or skill and so cannot be employed or are unemployable. A policy should be put in place to address the skill deficiency and educational backwardness suffered by blacks during the Apartheid era.

South African youths should be educated or educate themselves on the history of their country, to appreciate the sacrifice and contributions of other people to their nation and the fact that many of their current leaders were granted refuge in countries whose nationals are now being murdered, maimed and brutalized in the senseless xenophobic violence. South Africa and South Africans owe the world, especially the rest of Africa an eternal debt of gratitude. Apartheid was bad enough; xenophobia is one blight two many on the country's image and chequered history.