This is not a well thought out entry, it is only a way to
say that Botswana is a landlocked country in the middle of the Southern African
region. We count amongst our neighbours Namibia, Angola, Zimbabwe and to our
south South Africa. A number of Batswana work in or go to school in South
Africa, not unexpectedly some have married into South African families and
especially the boom of franchises in Botswana many locals regularly went
shopping in Johannesburg. Our two countries enjoy a tenable relationship. I
have heard many people say, though I wish there were no cause to even begin to
think along these lines, that South Africans don’t seem to treat Batswana they
way they do other citizens from the continent. They are “kinder to” them. The
people talk and they say on the whole South African immigration officials treat
most Botswana passport holders as though they were returning citizens or at the
very least welcome guests.
Between us we share a language, our national language is
spoken by millions more South Africans than there are citizens of Botswana.
I’ve spoken to a few Batswana currently resident in South Africa,
they appear concerned but seemingly not for their personal safety. They empathise
with other/fellow ‘foreign nationals’ and are incensed (as are most South
Africans who have nothing to do with these violent acts) but are not themselves
worried they might come under attack.
Attacks have happened in townships. Most Batswana
living in South Africa would probably count as middle income or at the very
least upwardly mobile. Even Batswana students are often on government
sponsorships or funded by well to do families.
All of this is surface talk because of course nothing about
murdering someone especially by setting them alight is logical. Therefore no
one is safe. We have a saying in Setswana ntlo
go sha mabapi ie if two houses are in proximity and one catches fire, they
will both burn. I do not think the long gone elders who lived in thatched mud
huts and coined this proverb knew what context it might suddenly embody (though
in encouraging neighbourly empathy, we should perhaps recognize that the old
are often wise beyond any wisdom we claim to possess).
And perhaps the first fire is not the one you and I see. A
man on fire, albeit on the inside might well find it …plausible to set another
on fire. But how do you choose your enemy? If he is indeed that, and not some
twisted representation of yourself. Why burn the man in the mirror? But this is
not an academic debate, and on some level I hope I never understand what might
make a man do this to another human being. But it is reality, a few hundred
kilometres from here there are unspeakable things happening. There are horrific
reports and images all over the internet.
One image has a mother and father holding their young in
their arms, clearly running away from a mob coming toward them.
There are others I cannot put into words.
In 2010 two years after the first xenophobic attacks that
I heard about, then Phd candidate Suren Pillay, gave a talk titled “Why is
xenophobic violence not the scandal that mobilizes the middle classes and the
suburbs into action?”
In it Pillay quotes Franz Fanon “The colonized
man will first manifest this aggressiveness which has been deposited in his
bones against his own people… the colonized man is an envious man’.
Without a meaningful decolonization of the society which benefits all, Fanon
warned, this envy in the post-independence period turns on
outsiders: ‘From nationalism, we have passed to chauvinism, and finally
to racism. These foreigners are called on to leave, their shops are burned,
their street stalls wrecked…We observe a permanent seesaw between African
unity, which fades quicker and quicker into the mists of oblivion…’ I am
shamelessly quoting a small section of what is an essay worth reading in its
entirety.
Reports that Malawi has sent buses to evacuate its
citizens.
Locals, and now foreigners too, carrying weapons in the
Durban CBD.
Looting of shops.
There have been reports of incendiary rhetoric by one
leader in particular. Generally speaking the hashtags to follow are
#xenophobicattacks #xenophobia #notoxenophobia #KwaDabeka
Xenophobia – intense
or irrational dislike or fear of people from other countries. Terms like
afrophobia have since come up on social media
Necklacing – (chiefly
in South Africa) a tyre doused or filled with petrol, placed around a victim's
neck, and set on fire.
In the documentary “The bloody miracle” which focuses on the
last few years before the first democratic elections in SA one participant
states that the person might be forced to drink petrol before being set alight.
I have no knowledge of the origin of this act and have ever only seen records of
it being performed by black people on black people.
Immigrant – a
person who comes to live permanently in a foreign country. Often used to
refer to asylum seekers and/or black and/or poor people who move to another
country
Expatriate – a
person who lives outside their native country.
Often used to refer to white and/or wealthy or employed
people who move to another country
Foreigner – a
person born in or coming from a country other than one's own.
Racism- the
belief that all members of each race possess characteristics or abilities
specific to that race, esp. so as to distinguish it as inferior or superior to
another race or races.
•
prejudice, discrimination, or antagonism directed against someone of a
different race based on such a belief.
60 dead and 16,000 displaced, the last time ‘this’ happened.
