PoliGazette

Is not exactly heaven on earth: ‘This was the kind of place that was not supposed to exist in the new South Africa. All black. All poor. Dense, squalid, dirty, angry — with charred patches of earth where men once stood.’

The violence that flared here, and in communities like it all over the Johannesburg area during two weeks of mob attacks that have left at least 56 people dead, has carried echoes of this nation’s notorious past. But the rage is not old. It is new, born of the broken dreams of South Africa’s post-apartheid era.

As a black business elite has grown and traditional townships such as Soweto have edged into the middle class, destitute squatter camps such as the Ramaphosa Informal Settlement have proliferated, swelling with millions of new arrivals — many from beyond South Africa’s porous borders. These places became crucibles of poverty and, it is now clear, hatred.

Here at the bottom of the nation’s notoriously rigid social hierarchy, poor, black South Africans complain they are falling behind Zimbabweans and Mozambicans, who always seemed to get the best jobs, the nicest houses, the most desirable women.

“I’m so tired of this place,” said David Maupi, 35, a lean, calloused man who has failed to find steady work after years of searching. “I don’t have food. I don’t have a job. I’ve got a wife and two children. I want to work.”

Economic strain alone does not explain the extent or the brutality of the recent attacks, in which tens of thousands of people, most wanting nothing more than a steady job and a better future for their children, have been chased away by spears, guns, planks of wood, lengths of pipe and worse.

But the ferocity of the violence has reminded South Africa of how desperate these forgotten places have become amid massive job losses, rising food prices and rampant crime. Here, the nation’s legacy of ethnic rivalry gradually hardened into widespread dislike of foreigners, who were seen as rivals and regarded as inferior “Makwerekwere” — a derogatory term used for immigrants from elsewhere in Africa.

And so poverty causes hatred in South Africa… like everywhere else in the world. When the going gets tough, blame foreigners. It seems to be human nature.

One South African, Jan Mahlaba, 33 years old, said: “I’m happy they are being killed because their lives are full of crime.”

A foreigner living in the neighborhood makes clear why South Africans themselves, not foreigners, are to blame for their situation:

“They are saying we are stealing their women, we are stealing their jobs, we are stealing their houses,” said Bila, 38, who came here 14 years ago and said he’s never done any of those things. “They don’t want to look for a job because they don’t want to work for less money.”

Homes of foreigners are being destroyed, and they themselves are killed.

One of the mistakes that has been made in South Africa, I think, is that people were given the impression that when Apartheid ended all would be well. Reality, however, isn’t quite that simple. It’s always difficult to rid society from prejudices and, more importantly, getting rid of Apartheid doesn’t (didn’t) mean that people don’t (wouldn’t) have to work very hard at being successful.

Abolishing Apartheid didn’t mean that blacks living in the Ghettos would automatically earn a lot of money; it simply made it more possible for them to do so… if they were willing to work hard and improve themselves.

Perhaps that message has not been communicated well enough.