Liberty and Equality follow Fraternity

When P.W Botha’s storm troopers were cutting down innocent schoolchildren with machine-gun fire, cracking whips over the heads of peaceful demonstrators and unleashing vicious dogs on fleeing crowds, we Zimbabweans were undoubtedly enraged. With the memory of our own struggle against a brutal apartheid regime fresh in our memory, we opened our arms to those evading the menace of harassment, arrest and even murder.

For the past ten years now, we Zimbabweans have sought refuge in South Africa from a new but equally perilous threat in our own country. We acknowledge with deep appreciation the sacrifices that the people of South Africa have made to accommodate us as our struggle against dictatorship continues.

Unfortunately, criminal gangs are attacking foreigners in South Africa and now this wave of despicable xenophobia has reached almost every corner of that country. Since mid-May, 50 people have been killed and over 25,000 displaced according to media reports.

Zimbabweans form the largest group of foreigners who live in South Africa and while news of the violence spread almost as quickly as the attacks themselves, little news about Zimbabweans’ reactions has been published.

When I checked my email on a sleepy morning last weekend, I was intrigued to get a sense of the emotions that are circulating in the Zimbabwean community. I was unsurprised to read strong expressions of shock and anger directed at the perpetrators of the attacks. What did surprise me were the measures being proposed in reaction to this crisis.

I opened a forwarded email titled “They are burning us alive in RSA” to see the depiction of a person on all fours burning in the street whilst surrounding police endeavored to extinguish the all consuming flames. That same email was promoting a boycott of “South African events and businesses” as a way to make a stand against “these barbaric Zulus.”

Surely, Zimbabweans of all people ought to understand the danger of perpetuating violent xenophobia. Our history is saturated with examples of fear and hate of the “other”. From colonial domination to the current oppressive state of nationalism in Zimbabwe, the claws of division have brought our nation to its knees. If such a campaign takes hold our nation will fall from its knees to the fetal position and draw its final breath.

Those who would take an eye for an eye must to ask themselves whether the strategy of attacking South African business is in their own interest. Moreover, the extent to which that community has the power to address the immediate concerns of Zimbabweans living in that country is at best, unknown.

Indeed, there is an economic undertone to the attacks on foreigners in South Africa. Its people are increasingly becoming impatient with the lack of material improvements in their lives since the end of apartheid. Again, as Zimbabweans we can identify better than anyone else with the problem of neo-colonialism. But, when in our rage we lose sight of history’s lessons, we open the door to mistakes of historical proportions. Disrupting the economy and creating a more adverse situation for South Africans can only compound our own precarious position as guests in their country.

On Saturday May 24, thousands in South Africa took to the streets to protest against the violence. This is the glimmer of hope to which we must not be blinded. Now is the time to seek out and cling to those who share our revulsion for the emerging abuses in South Africa for it is through our South African allies alone that our message can be sent to the political leadership of that country.

We can never forget that the people of South Africa and Zimbabwe have a long history of shared struggle and that the spirit of unity must be nurtured because the struggle is still ongoing. Gwede Mantashe, Secretary General of the ANC, recently recalled on the ANC website that:

“Our neighbors were collectively punished by the Apartheid regime for harboring the cadres of the ANC.”

Zimbabweans too must never forget that more recently, the people of South Africa have stood firmly behind us in our opposition to the abuses and xenophobia of Robert Mugabe. The South African leadership’s impotence in dealing with him has baffled its own people as much as it has us and it is not farfetched to conclude that their desire for their leaders to come up to speed is as strong as ours.

South Africans and Zimbabweans are inextricably bound up by the ropes of cultural and political history and anything less than fraternal relations dooms us all.