Metro administration problems need open minds

Given the fragility of metro politics, party leaders understandably expect their public representatives to be restrained on matters involving coalition partners.

Indeed, it would be unwise to say anything that might collapse a metro administration.

However, restraint seems to be unevenly distributed, especially on the sensitive matter of foreign nationals. In recent weeks, some have been pushing the envelope, flirting with what looks like xenophobia.

If we say nothing, our consent may be assumed. The drift towards xenophobia is troubling.

The political trend was spotted early by Gareth van Onselen, who tweeted on 3 November last year, after local government elections: “Well, one thing we now know: raging xenophobia plays awful well in Johannesburg”.

EFF leader Julius Malema was slower but his visits to restaurants to check on staff nationalities are vote-catching gimmicks. They also reverse his earlier calls for the opening of African borders.

Flip-flopper-in-chief. ActionSA leader Herman Mashaba raised eyebrows with a weekend remark about the employment of foreign nationals in senior positions in the department of basic education.

In response, educator Jonathan Jansen called him a “disgraceful leader”, and eNCA’s Sally Burdett gave him a torrid time.

It would be easy to take refuge behind a coalition-preserving imperative and say nothing about xenophobia.
But as 13th-century Italian poet Dante Alighieri said:

“The darkest places in hell are reserved for those who maintain their neutrality in times of moral crisis…”

This is a time of moral crisis. It is not a time to remain neutral. Xenophobia is not a fantasy. We need to cool the rhetoric and try to understand each other better.

For those who don’t remember what happened 14 years ago, here’s a Human Rights Watch report: “In May 2008 xenophobic violence broke out in Alexandra, Johannesburg, and rapidly spread to seven of South Africa’s nine provinces, resulting in 62 deaths, including 21 South Africans, 11 Mozambicans, five Zimbabweans and three Somalis; thousands were injured.

“Some 40 000 foreign nationals left the country and a further 50 000 remain internally displaced.”

To rekindle those fires is cheap, dangerous politics – not a harmless exercise. We cannot simply look the other way. And righteous condemnation of xenophobia is not enough either.

In a thoughtful column in Business Day, Johan Koornhof notes that many of us deal with immigrants daily.

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They are often in “low-income but steady jobs, have children here at school and some have no other home than SA”.

“People who have travelled far, sometimes the length of a continent on foot, to eke out a better living in another country, have been proven in many academic studies worldwide to be more inventive, purposeful and diligent than
average”.

Understanding immigrants, he says, “requires an open mind, a bit of knowledge of the ‘other’, and being a little brave”.

In his view, immigrants are invented enemies. We don’t need to invent any. We have enough real enemies — “inept officials, freeloaders, factious political parties, the corrupt, racists and dogmatists”.

Koornhof’s first requirement, an open mind, might be the biggest challenge.

Without labelling, insulting or denigrating, we need to persuade compatriots that there is a better way. Can we?