Many in South Africa believed that township violence was a thing of the past, but the murderous attacks on Zimbabwean refugees and other immigrants over the past two weeks prove otherwise
AS RELATIVE CALM descended on South Africa's squatter camps yesterday after two weeks of race-related violence, it seemed like the time for a post-mortem had arrived.
South Africans have not experienced the type of violence that began in the Alexander Township and has since spread to most of the financial capital's other informal settlements, since the mid-1990s.
During that transitional period from apartheid rule to democracy, clashes between members of the Zulu Inkatha Freedom Party and the Xhosa-dominated African National Congress very nearly destroyed the fledgling democracy and thousands lost their lives. While the current situation is not yet comparable, at least 42 foreigners have been brutally murdered, a further 17,000 have become refugees and over 500 South Africans have been arrested for their alleged involvement in the unrest.
Although criminal violence has remained a serious problem in South Africa for the past 14 years (the country has one of the highest murder rates in the world) many people believed the level of township violence that occurred during apartheid was a thing of the past. The evidence of the past 14 days has dispelled that notion.
A person entering one of the informal settlements today will be confronted with scenes reminiscent of old: the smoking charred remains of small shacks and shops; the dried bloodstains on the earth that mark where the victims fell.
Understandably, people like Zimbabwe-born Samantha Ndlovu, as well as South Africans in general, want to know what has happened to the miracle of the rainbow nation.
Six days ago the 26-year-old mother of three young children, who works as a domestic worker, gathered their possessions and left the poor Johannesburg inner city suburb they called home to escape the xenophobic attacks engulfing the city.
She has been fortunate. Rather than ending up in one of the many impromptu camps established at police stations and churches around the city, she was taken in by an employer who lives in an unaffected middle-class suburb.
Despite the relative safety she and her family have secured, Samantha's recent brush with South Africa's longstanding race-related problems has left her fearful and uncertain about the future.
"I have been terrified since it all began and I cannot sleep anymore," she says.
"One of my uncles was murdered and my brother was badly beaten during the attacks at Tembisa [township], where I used to live with my family before leaving two months ago.
"I got calls from my uncle and brother at night after it started. They told me how afraid they were, and that South Africans were waiting outside to kill them. Then I got a call to say it had happened - they had killed my uncle.
"Even though I live in a different place, I stayed inside my house for a week because I was afraid that people outside were looking for foreigners. Now I do not know what to do."
To say the government was caught on the hop would be an understatement - 10 days of mayhem were allowed to pass before the military was sent in to restore order.
Its subsequent reaction to the growing humanitarian crisis has also been cold, at best - President Thabo Mbeki even jetted off to an African Union meeting in Tanzania on Wednesday without visiting the sites of the violence or its victims.
While it was a serious mistake to dither over the deployment of the army, the probable reason for doing so is understandable. The last time the military was used as a means to control its own people, a minority white government bent on suppressing the majority's march towards freedom and democracy was at the helm. For the current government to associate itself with the same means of control employed by the hated apartheid regime would only have occurred if officials believed there was no other way to avoid further bloodshed.
Of all the questions to have emerged from this tragedy, the most pertinent for the Africans caught up in the unrest is how can South Africans turn against people from the nations that supported them during their struggle against apartheid?
For most of the 1980s, countries such as Zimbabwe and Mozambique provided safe havens within their borders to the black South Africans involved in the armed struggle against the apartheid regime, as well as the thousands of others who went into exile.
SO WHY IS THAT same generosity and solidarity not afforded to the estimated three to five million economic immigrants and asylum seekers living in South Africa today? And, what has compelled thousands of poor people to take part in such brutal acts? The government is blaming criminals and right-wing elements for orchestrating the riots and attacks, with national intelligence chief Manala Manzini insisting the mayhem was deliberately unleashed ahead of next year's general election.
"We believe that as South Africa prepares for another national election early next year, the so-called black-on-black violence that we witnessed prior to our first election in 1994 has deliberately been unleashed and orchestrated," he said.
However, many civil society groups are not so convinced. They believe a closer look at the government's failures in relation to a number of its policies would provide a better understanding of the situation.
While this latest outbreak of xenophobia is by far the most deadly of recent times, other incidents with the same problems at their root have occurred over the past three years in the Western Cape and Limpopo Provinces.
Despite the governments' attempts to improve the lives of the millions of poor black South Africans through the implementation of free market economic initiatives, the vast majority of people who were poor under the apartheid regime remain in abject poverty today.
Unemployment hovers around 30 per cent amongst the general population, but amongst the youth - who are largely responsible for the current unrest - the figure jumps to 60 per cent. Basic service delivery in many informal settlements is still a promise rather than a reality.
Reporters who interviewed perpetrators of the violence were told foreigners were being targeted because they are responsible for the country's high levels of crime and they take jobs and housing away from locals.
If life were not difficult enough for the poor, their situation has been made worse by the failure of the government's immigration policy, which has allowed a huge influx of illegal immigrants from neighbouring countries to enter the country unchecked.
The deputy chief executive of the civil society group Afri-forum, Alana Bailey, this week outlined the problems created by the government's failure to control the borders and implement stricter immigration control.
"Illegal immigrants are pouring into the country at a faster rate than they can be deported. Their ability to be back in South Africa within hours from being deported is just as legendary as the ways in which South African identity documents can be obtained illegally.
"South Africans also know that as long as President Mbeki refuses to acknowledge that there is a crisis in Zimbabwe, Zimbabweans will continue flooding into South Africa illegally, competing with the poorest South Africans for housing, medical care, social assistance, employment and educational opportunities," she said.
But it appears the government refuses to accept such a scenario at this point in time. Minister in the Presidency Essop Pahad insisted on Thursday the government's failure to deliver services and tackle poverty effectively was not to blame for the violence.
He made the point that if poverty was to blame, there would be similar attacks throughout the rest of the continent, Asia and South America.
Even if the government's suggestions regarding who and what is to blame for the unrest prove to be correct, it is also true that continuing to fail South Africa's poor will only make tackling the xenophobia more difficult.