Never underestimate how easily a country can shoot itself in the foot. History is replete with examples of nations that have destroyed themselves by following charlatans over cliffs with their eyes wide open. The migrant crisis puts South Africa in danger of joining this miserable club.
Two weeks after the June 30 “deadline” for undocumented foreigners to leave the country came and went, the organisers have cranked up their campaign. They are visiting homes, factories and other places of business, seizing supposed foreigners and “handing them over” to police.
These marches are led primarily by the smooth-talking Jacinta Ngobese-Zuma of March and March. South Africans are lapping up her narrative that the source of their problems is migration.
Ngobese-Zuma and her followers remind me of Nongqawuse, the 15-year-old prophetess who told the Xhosa people in 1856 that her ancestors had instructed her that households should destroy their crops and kill their cattle. As a reward, the dead would rise and the spirits would sweep all European settlers into the sea, while new crops and healthy cattle would reappear.
The people were desperate for solutions at the time as lung sickness was ravaging many Xhosa herds. The introduction of European cattle to the region was probably responsible for the disease.
On February 18 1857, when the sun was supposed to turn red and the dead to rise, nothing happened. Kill more of your cattle, said Nongqawuse’s adherents. Within a year, 400,000 cattle had been slaughtered. An estimated 40,000 people died of starvation.
In contemporary politics, no act of self-sabotage comes close to the British voting to end their association with the EU in 2016. Brexit’s proponents claimed that leaving the EU would save the UK £350m every day, which could be used to improve the National Health Service; that immigration would be solved by “taking back control” of borders; that the UK would be freed of red tape; and that it would negotiate lucrative new trade deals with the world.
None of these daft promises have been fulfilled. Britain is poorer and more isolated today while one of the Brexit architects, Nigel Farage, faces allegations of corruption after taking millions from a crypto billionaire.
Beware the false prophet.
My sense now is that Ngobese-Zuma can’t control the violent tiger she is holding by the tail. The three leaders of this movement — Ngobese-Zuma, Nkosikhona “Phakelumthakathi” Ndabandaba and Ngizwe Mchunu — have talked peace at their events, but now the door-to-door campaigns have turned vigilante, as many of us have pointed out they would. The leaders can’t control this. Indeed, some would venture to say their utterances have already dehumanised black foreigners so much that their followers are now at the point where they believe it’s fine to beat, torture and even kill them.
This is what happened in Rwanda. This is what happened in Nazi Germany. All genocides proceed in this manner: vilify a group, dehumanise its members and then use that word much loved by genocidaires across the world — exterminate.
For these reasons, expect the attacks to continue.
South African business is not an island and will be badly burnt by these attacks. Our firms have traversed the continent. They mine in Ghana and sell groceries in Nigeria. They connect people from Cape to Cairo via banks, telecoms, television and other ways. It may not have happened in the past, but the more attacks on foreigners here, in this connected age, the more likely there is to be commercial, political, diplomatic and economic backlash, including boycotts of South African firms.
Domestic productivity will take a hit. It’s easy enough to drive out Zimbabweans. How many of those who have legal Zimbabwean exemption permits allowing them to work here have been hounded out — and how many South Africans are skilled enough to replace them?
Our government’s incoherence is not helping, either. Last week, minister in the presidency Khumbudzo Ntshavheni responded to Nigeria’s concerns for its citizens by saying South Africa “wants to know where the Nigerian drug dens are”. Seriously, minister?
I don’t think our policymakers realise just how much damage these anti-migrant campaigns are causing South Africa domestically and internationally. Like Nongqawuse’s deadly prophecy and Brexit’s false promises, we will one day look at these events with regret.