Xenophobia in South Africa

There are a number of obstacles to any kind of work here in South Africa, and only some of them have to do with physical resources. One of the biggest and most widespread challenges that we frequently encounter is racism.

Sometimes it's based strictly on skin color; South Africa certainly has a dirty history of breaking people of different shades into different categories for the purpose of oppression and control.

But sometimes it rears its ugly head as tribalism or xenophobia. Many people in South Africa, including those who have historically been oppressed the most, often perpetuate negative stereotypes about their closest neighbors, simply because they belong to a different tribal group, speak a different dialect, or come from a neighboring African nation.

After our first week here, it was time for my wife and me to move to a "homestay" for the two month duration of our job training. We were given no details about the family, location, living arrangements, etc. until the day we were to meet our new host family. He or she could be anybody, with any size family, living in any type of home, near or far from the campus we were training at. We had NO IDEA who or what it would be like. But we were very excited at the chance of interacting on a much more personal level with the South Africans who lived around us, and we hoped for a nice family where we could learn a lot.

Well, it turned out we were to live with one widowed lady of the Tswana tribe who is in her 60s and had a very nice house in a quiet rural area a good little ways outside of the already-small training town. Her name (changed for publication) is Ma/Mrs. Tsiphi.

The first few days were awkward; I mean really, what was she to do with the strange white people who suddenly moved into her house? But in a short time we all warmed up to each other, especially when she realized that we didn't want any special treatment and simply wanted to enjoy life as she did. The fact that she spoke rough but good English certainly helped, even more since we were spending most our day learning xiTsonga and not seTswana (her language).

We ate dinner with her every night, shared recipes, chatted from time to time, and hung around her house whenever we could. She's not a very talkative or emotional lady, but she liked having us around and often worried if it started to get dark and we weren't back from the day's training yet.

A bit over a month later, the time came for us to visit our permanent site for a week, check it out, see how things are, and agree to stay here. In preparing to leave, Ma Tsiphi started becoming increasingly more worried about whether or not we had everything we needed, especially food.

She told us several times, and very emphatically, "you don't know what kind of people they are!" We were both surprised that she didn't realize that "we didn't know what kind of people they were" the very same day we moved in with her and that our impending site visit wasn't any different, but we just chuckled to ourselves every time she gave the warning.

Of course, we were coming to visit the Tsonga people and since they were so far removed from the Tswana people, they could eat food from leaves, wear shoes on their hands, and live in trees for all she knew. She finally decided the only good way to make sure we were taken care of was to bake a ton of scones and rolls and make sure we took a huge bucket full of food along with us.

Of course site visit went just fine, the people are great, the food was great, and unfortunately many of Ma Tsiphi's delicious rolls and scones spoiled before we had the chance to eat them. But with all the food that was being poured out to us left and right, we really didn't have a choice.

We only had a couple weeks left at Ma Tsiphi's after site visit. Sometime during those weeks, our organization informed everyone's host families that they're hoping to do another training in the same location next year and asked them whether or not they'd be willing to host new trainees again.

Ma Tsiphi was quick to volunteer for a new one or two trainees to stay with her again. We talked to her about it a couple of times, probing how she felt about that idea. We decided to make a joke out of her earlier fears and told her, while laughing, "but you don't know what kind of people they are!" Instead of laughing back, she just said, "Mmm! Mmm!" (a common way of saying "Yes! Yes!" here) and nodded her head.

The thing is, until you meet someone, and take time to get to know them, you obviously "don't know what kind of people they are." With the history of racial oppression and inter-tribal conflict here in South Africa, that often translates into seclusion and xenophobia. Just a few months ago, there were massive xenophobic riots in the poorest areas surrounding South Africa's capital that left over 50 African immigrants dead and even more homes burned down.

Late last year the elected South African President got kicked out of office because him and the aspiring president for this year's election have been locked in a political/legal battle that's clearly divided their constituencies along tribal lines.

Almost any time (but not every time) we meet a fellow white person in town and talk a little about what we're doing and where we're staying, they express shock and often try to convince us we shouldn't be living in the village with "them". I can't even tell you all the funny and exaggerated stories we've heard from rural South Africans about what the Afrikaaner minority must still be doing to keep the black majority down.

All of these fears and misunderstandings about one another anywhere you go must surely be based on some kernel of truth or some bit of history where one person of one tribe or race or nation did something despicable to someone of another. South Africa just happens to have a LOT of history of that sort of thing.

But South Africa is also a nation in transition. Things ARE changing. Racism/tribalism/xenophobia is declining. There were several people in our training village who have taken in Zimbabwean refugees, sometimes whole families, who are fleeing from the current crisis there. Many of the people in our current village, including our nearest neighbors, were once refugees from a Mozambiquan crisis and the rest of the village helped to integrate them.

When we told Ma Tsiphi, "you don't know what kind of people they are!" she agreed with a hearty "Mmm! Mmm!", but it didn't change her mind about choosing to host more trainees. She'll bring one or two more into her home anyway, regardless of her fear of the unknown.

In the end, what else can you do? A shared history of conflict or personal experience with people who've treated you badly can leave you wary and skeptical. It's easy to talk about that skepticism when you're talking about people you don't know and who you've never met.

But while acknowledging the possibility that anything could happen, even something bad, I suppose the best solution is to go through with it anyway. Meet the person. Take the time to get to know them. How else can South Africa overcome its past and achieve the reconciliation that is the goal of its new government? Let's hope that more people here in South Africa give other people a chance. It's really the only way forward.