Apartheid's sad legacy, now crucible of hatred

The Ramaphosa Informal Settlement 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 there and in such communities all over Johannesburg during two weeks of mob attacks 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, as is now clear, hatred.

In the settlement, at the bottom of the nation's rigid social hierarchy, poor, black South Africans complain they are falling behind Zimbabweans and Mozambicans, who always seemed to get the best jobs and the nicest houses.

“I'm tired of this place,'' said David Maupi, 35, a lean, calloused man who has failed to find steady work. “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 thousands of people, most wanting nothing more than a steady job and a better future for their children, have been chased away with spears and guns.

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.

In them, the nation's legacy of ethnic rivalry hardened into widespread dislike of foreigners, who were seen as rivals and regarded as inferior Makwerekwere — a derogatory term for immigrants from elsewhere in Africa.

This toxic combination first caught fire in Alexandra township — one of the nation's densest and most crime-ridden. Within days, the violence spread across the city, the region and the nation.

“Never since the birth of our democracy have we witnessed such callousness,'' President Thabo Mbeki said in a nationally televised address on Africa Day.

Authorities have been investigating the possibility that the attacks were organised, but no concrete evidence has been publicly presented.

Interviews among victims and supporters of the attacks suggest that the news of violence in one area inspired mobs in others, especially as it became clear that the assaults were successful in pushing immigrants out.

At least 10,000 Mozambicans have returned to that nation, which has declared a national state of emergency.

“Maybe if they leave, we'll get jobs,'' said Gezani Velly Makolele, 26, who survives by taking odd jobs fixing cars but who has not had steady work since moving to the Ramaphosa settlement in 2002.

“They use witchcraft to get jobs,'' Makolele added. It “helps the white people to like them more''.

Even the few men in the area with steady paycheques, such as factory worker Jan Mahlaba, 33, complain that immigrants undercut their wages, or contribute to South Africa's high rate of violent crime.

“I'm happy they are being killed because their lives are full of crime,'' Mahlaba said.

Alberto Jossias Chivetlhe, 53, the owner of a house that had been destroyed, has taken refuge on the lawn outside a nearby police station, where hundreds of victims have gathered.

He said he had come to this area in 1972 to work in a nearby mine, then settled permanently in 1984, eventually gaining South African citizenship. That made him eligible for government housing made of concrete blocks rather than the metal sheeting common in Ramaphosa.

Homes lost

Chivetlhe was living in Ramaphosa with his wife and three children when a mob attacked on May 18. He recalled the men screaming as they ripped open the roof, saying, “How can Shangaans'' — the ethnic group of most of the Mozambicans here — “have houses when we as citizens don't!''

Chivetlhe, a former schoolteacher, has since sent his family to Mozambique. He expressed little sympathy for the frustrations of unemployed South Africans. “We come fully skilled,'' he said. “South Africans need practice first.''

Alfredo Tembe Bila, 38, a Mozambican butcher chased out of his home in Ramaphosa with his family, said: “They are saying we are stealing, their jobs and their houses,'' said Bila. “They don't want to look for a job because they don't want to work for less money.''

Though the situation in Ramaphosa has calmed, there are signs of the new order taking hold. Men and women are scavenging leftover metal sheeting to build homes. One 29-year-old man, who declined to give his name, said a friend in Ramaphosa called to invite him to take over the lot of an immigrant who was chased away.

At Chivetlhe's house, once one of the nicest in Ramaphosa, a South African family moved in the week after he left, but was evicted by the police, neighbours said. Whoever gets to stay in the house will have to do extensive cleaning and repair.

That didn't stop Rosina Kaibane, 30, a South African hairdresser, from occupying Chivetlhe's front yard, where she was braiding the hair of a customer. Kaibane said her salon was burnt in the violence — it was next to an immigrant's home — and she needed a new place to work.

Chivetlhe has not given up hope of returning, but the men gathered outside his house made clear that he will not. “It will never happen,'' Mahlaba said. “We're still going to do the same thing.''

A friend, Jram Motseatsea, 30, added: “If he wants to die, he can come back.''