Paddy O'Halloran, The Con
Almost three
weeks have passed since the start of xenophobic looting in Grahamstown that
left 500 “foreign” shop owners and family members—most of them South African
citizens—with nothing, and more than half of them displaced from their homes.
Although looting sputtered out a week ago, and shops in and near the centre of
town have opened again, most of the affected people remain displaced, and most
shops remain shut. There is no viable plan for the people”s reintegration into
the community.
Grahamstown is
in deep political crisis. The community members who have worked against
xenophobia, as well as the affected people, are sure of one thing: Makana
Municipality and the local police have failed them, and, in some cases,
actively contributed to the crisis. However, neither the events of the last two
weeks nor the authorities” role in them are unfamiliar in the town”s history.
Grahamstown
was founded as a military headquarters in 1812 during a vicious war waged by
the British against the Xhosa, and it grew as a settler town from 1820. The
voluntary arrival, and forced relocation of Africans to the immediate
Grahamstown area during the 1830s and 1840s, spurred the colonial government”s
decision to set up the first official African “locations” in Grahamstown. These
were days when Africans were counted as “foreigners” in the Cape Colony.
Through the latter half of the nineteenth century, fear and suspicion of
Africans arriving in Grahamstown from further east on the advancing colonial
frontier, inflected the particular racism of the town and region. In this
xenophobic view, in which to be African was to live perpetually on the edge of
criminality, to be “more African”, from the rural frontier, was even worse.
In the first
years of the twentieth century, white Grahamstown identified “unemployed”
people and “squatters” as the primary problems in town. These classifications
denoted both “African” and “illegal”, since employment and a permit were
requirements for Africans residing in both the government locations, and the
newer municipal locations at the time. The Grahamstown Journal reported in 1908
that police were “carrying on a regular crusade against squatters and vagrants
in the city locations”. Fifteen “illegal inhabitants” were arrested in a raid
by mounted police in 1911, which led to protest action, and petitions that were
ignored by the municipality.
Control of
Grahamstown’s African residents was tightened in this period, while the
problems they faced mounted. Legislation imposing curfews on Africans,
providing for tyrannical lease agreements, limiting livestock, and advocating
(as ever) the criminalisation of beer-brewing coincided with chronic water
shortages, poor and insufficient housing, and deteriorating roads. In 1913, a
petition was signed by 88 women because of the poor treatment of residents by a
municipal official. The petition was rejected by the municipality on three
grounds: it was delivered by women, three of them had signed the names for the
others, and some of them had been convicted of illegally brewing beer. The
last, beer brewing, was strongly linked to racist and xenophobic perceptions of
“African-ness”.
Beer brewing
was also a livelihood for many of Grahamstown’s African residents, mainly
women. Municipal Beer Halls were built in Grahamstown in the 1930s, and
home-brewing was once again defined as criminal. The ostensible objective was
to use the revenue created by the Beer Halls to fund the management of the
locations, a strategy that had been employed in Durban. In reality, the
Municipal Beer Halls were a business, and the women who brewed at home were
competitors. In the 1950s - during apartheid, when Africans were not counted as
South African citizens - Grahamstown residents, mainly women, protested against
the Beer Halls because they were corrupt, and offered no benefits to the
residents. Nevertheless, Grahamstown’s Municipal Beer Halls endured until the
1980s, when they were burnt down.
None of this
will be strange news in South Africa in 2015.
In April 2015,
xenophobic attacks in Durban targeted foreign-born Africans, particularly
Congolese people, as well as people from the Eastern Cape living in informal
settlements. To be poor and African - the “more African”, the worse - were the
criteria for victimisation. When members of Abahlali baseMjondolo organised a
(legal) anti-xenophobia march, it was violently prevented by police. Abahlali
identified the police, the ruling party, and local taxi drivers as supporters
and instigators of xenophobic violence in Durban.
Shortly
afterwards, beginning in July, Operation Fiela deployed South African Police
Service (SAPS) and army units to combat crime by rounding up “foreigners” and
other “illegal inhabitants”, including people who are part of land occupations
around the country. Poor people, Africans from other countries, and Africans
living in informal settlements are targeted. The same understanding that the
authorities employed over a century ago in Grahamstown, which views “illegal
inhabitants” (foreigners) and “unemployed people” as problems, is at work
today. It legitimates, as it did in colonial Grahamstown, various forms of
prejudicial politics and violence.
As in Durban,
local politicians and businesses are implicated in Grahamstown”s xenophobic
politics. Municipal councillors openly expressed xenophobic views in the first
days of the looting, and Grahamstown”s taxi associations actively instigated
and supported the looting by bearing xenophobic slogans and transporting
looters for free, according to community members.
The police
also have a central role. Inexplicably, SAPS have claimed that their
“restoration of order” and “support” of the “foreigners” after the week of
looting was a success for Operation Fiela. In contrast to this narrative,
Grahamstown shop owners affected by the looting as well as members of the
Unemployed People”s Movement (UPM), have recounted police behaviours that
ranged from indifference, to laughing at people whose shops were being looted,
to facilitation of and participation in the looting.
On 30 October,
echoing protests of the past, women whose livelihoods have been destroyed by
the recent looting, marched to Grahamstown’s City Hall. In addition to opposing
xenophobia, their demands included provision of proper housing for all,
addressing crime in the township, and the provision of water and other services
- all nearly permanent causes for protest in Grahamstown for over a century and
a half. The mayor refused to descend from the building to accept their
memorandum or to speak with them. In the days before the march, as the
municipality and police manoeuvred to prevent any public protest by the women,
the mayor had told these women that she had “forgotten” about them.
Arguments have
been made lately that xenophobia is a symptom of poverty. Racist explanations
have invoked the rancid rhetoric of black people as innately, and irrationally
violent. Historically, however, xenophobic politics have been strongly linked
to colonial racism and to the manufacture of inequality still experienced in
South Africa today. It has been a politics of oppression and control of poor
people and “foreigners” - those who are deemed not to belong, who have most
often been identified as Africans. The state, in its many forms from the
colonial period through apartheid and into the post-1994 era, has actively
participated in defining “foreignness” in ways that exclude poor, black people.
Monopolies and business interests—beer, taxis, shops—have had a role in
deciding who and what is “foreign”, in exclusion and inciting violence. In
recent years, poor people have been mobilised against other poor people and
Africans against other Africans in this project of exclusion, control, and
oppression.