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Constiutionally Speaking: The Rule of Law and “conflicts of interests”

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The Rule of Law and “conflicts of interests”
Posted on July 2nd, 2009 by Pierre De Vos

One of the most important but often neglected aspects of the Rule of Law is the requirement that individuals must be able to enforce their rights and legal entitlements in a court of law. At the heart of the Rule of Law is the notion that we are a rule-based society and that everyone – no matter how powerful or weak – must have the equal chance to enforce their rights and legal entitlements as set out by law.

However, in South Africa most people – let alone poor people – do not have the money needed to pay for lawyers that would enforce their rights and entitlements in court. A poor person who enters into a verbal contract with someone who fails to honour his or her word, will not be assisted by the law if the powerful contractee just ignores his or her obligations. Neither will such a person have much chance to challenge an unjust, unfair or unconstitutional decision by a state official to stop her pension, evict her from her shack or confiscate her goats – simply because such a person will not be able to pay lawyers to represent him or her.

It reminds one of the famous saying by Anatole France: “The law, in its majestic equality, forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal their bread.”

Yet, when politicians talk about the Rule of Law they often do not deal with this harsh reality which – perhaps more than the lack of transformation on the bench – negatively affect the legitimacy of the courts and of the legal system in South Africa.

For some communities – especially those who are well organised – relief can come in the form of the Legal Resources Centre, the Women’s Legal Centre or private law firms who do pro-bono work or otherwise assist poor litigants at reduced cost. One such firm is Smith Tabata Buchanan Boyes who recently represented backyard shack-dwellers with no access to formal housing in a case against the City of Cape Town (at a reduced rate at the request of the South African Council of Churches).

As Jackie Dugard and Kate Tissington reports in this morning’s Business Day:

The backyarders belong to Abahlali baseMjondolo, a national shack-dwellers’ movement with its base in Durban. They had occupied an empty piece of land in Macassar Village, on which they erected shacks, in mid-May. However, the City of Cape Town’s Anti-Land Invasion Unit, together with the police, demolished their structures and confiscated their materials.

Abahlali won the first phase of its battle when it secured an urgent interdict against the city , preventing the demolition of any shack or structure at Macassar Village without an order of court. It also compelled the city to return to the occupiers all building materials that were illegally confiscated. However, the city defied the interdict and continued demolishing shacks and confiscating building materials.

But in our lovely capitalist system, no good deed usually goes unpunished, so on 18 June Smith Tabata Buchanan Boyes received a letter from the city of Cape Town terminating all the city’s contracts for legal work with the firm. The letter from the director of legal services notes: “It has come to our attention that whilst acting on behalf of the City of Cape Town … you also acted for a third party against the city. The city is therefore terminating its mandate with your firm.”

This seems deeply disturbing to me and may have serious consequences for poor litigants and for the Rule of Law. One can concede – as Dugard and Tissington does – that there might well be instances where a direct conflict of interest would preclude a law firm, say, from representing a municipality in an eviction application while also representing the people under threat of eviction by the city.

Although in practice some law firms “choose sides” and act, say, either for employers or the unions, there would usually not be any conflict of interest merely because a law firm represents an organ of state (like the city of Cape Town) in other matters, while also representing a third party against that organ of state in an unrelated matter.

It seems suspiciously like the City of Cape Town has ”punished” a law firm for acting on behalf of poor litigants in a case against the city. This sets a dangerous precedent. What would happen if the national government follows the example of the DA-led city? Law firms will then have to choose between representing poor litigants who want to take on the state on the one hand, or receiving lucrative work from the state on the other. As firms have salaries to pay and directors to keep happy, they will mostly stop representing those who wish to enforce their rights or legal entitlements against the state and we would move even further away from the ideal of a country under the Rule of Law than we already are.

The DA is trying hard to convince us that it is not (only) the party of rich white privilege anymore and Helen Zille has been dancing and singing with black voters to show how compassionate and non-racial the DA has become. But voters are not stupid and during the election almost no poor black citizens voted for the DA. And a good thing too, because decisions like this by a DA-led city seems to confirm the worst fears about the DA and what it really stands for.

There is perhaps a bright light at the end of this tunnel. Given the fact that the ANC usually does anything that the DA does not do, it might well be that the ANC-led government will not follow the bad example of the DA-led city council and will ensure that just because a firm acts for poor people against the state would not mean that the particular firm will be blacklisted from doing work for the state.

Constitutionally Speaking: Irene Grootboom died, homeless, forgotten, no C-class Mercedes in sight

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Irene Grootboom died, homeless, forgotten, no C-class Mercedes in sight
Posted on August 11th, 2008 by Pierre De Vos

Irene Grootboom died last week, but we hardly noticed as we were all too busy obsessing about yet another court appearance of Mr. Jacob Zuma. She died homeless and penniless, not yet fifty years old, in the same week that robbers broke into the garage of ANC Youth League President Julius Malema’s upmarket home in Sandton and stole stuff from his C-Class Mercedes.

The ANC Youth League did not have time to issue a press statement about the death of Mrs. Grootboom. They were too upset about the break-in at the fancy house of Mr. Malema. Breaking into a C-Class Mercedes is apparently not a revolutionary act – especially if that C-class belongs to Comrade kortbroek Malema. Thus the Youth League did have time to pontificate on this break-in: who cares about a poor and destitute woman who made legal history if there is a revolution to be fought and a man of dubious ethical standards to be defended. The Youth League statement reads in part:

We hold a firm view that this dastardly act of cowardice is the work of desperate forces who believe they can intimidate us into submission. It is a sad day in our country to realise that we still have apartheid-style tactics where one’s residence is ransacked with impunity. We dare these forces of darkness to confront us openly in broad daylight. The Youth League condemns this act of cowardice in the strongest possible terms. An attack on leaders of the ANCYL is an attack on the ANCYL itself.

For me this juxtaposition seems to sum up much of what is wrong in South Africa (and with the ANC and the debate about Jacob Zuma) in 2008. Mrs. Grootboom made legal history when the Constitutional Court (those pesky counter-revolutionaries!) delivered judgment in a groundbreaking case that carried her name, giving some content to the right of access to housing guaranteed in article 26 of the Constitution.

Eight years ago the Constitutional Court ruled in Grootboom’s favour, saying that she and others living in an informal settlement on Wallacedene sports ground near Kraaifontein had a right to demand from the state to act reasonably to provide access to housing to all South Africans by devising and implementing a housing policy that did not neglect the most poor and vulnerable members of society.

Because the state’s housing policy did not cater at all for homeless people – those in urgent need – the Court declared the state’s housing policy to be unreasonable and thus invalid. But because it was careful to respect the separation of powers and because it feared that it did not have the institutional competence to dictate to the state exactly how it had to act to progressively provide more and more South Africans with better and better access to housing, the Constitutional Court found that Mrs. Grootboom could not demand a house from the state. She could only demand that the state act reasonably to implement a housing policy.

Implicit in the Court’s judgment was an assumption that the state really cared about people like Mrs. Grootboom and that, given some guidance, the government would eventually address the needs of Mrs. Grootboom and others like her. It assumed that the members of government would not spend its time fighting about positions and power, but would really try to help people like Mrs. Grootboom who had placed their names on housing waiting lists many years before in the hope of accessing housing.

Eight years later this assumption seems rather optimistic, to say the least. As the disastrous anti-poor N2 Gateway project has shown, the government often seems more concerned about what Sep Blatter and rich overseas visitors might think as they drive from the airport to the new R300 million 2010 soccer stadium, than what is best for the poor and homeless citizens of South Africa.

And aided and abetted by “revolutionary” judges like Judge President John Hlophe, the state’s housing policy now often seems to consist of attempts at removing destitute citizens from prime land close to job opportunities near city centres to far-away townships in order to make way for middle income houses for people with the necessary ANC connections to jump to the front of a housing queue.

Although many houses have been built by our government and many people provided with access to housing, the needs of the really poor and destitute – like Mrs. Irene Grootboom – still do not seem to be a priority for politicians who drive around in fancy cars and live in leafy suburbs among the despicable white racists they so enjoy to deride and whom they need to give legitimacy to their (mis)rule.

Mrs. Irene Grootboom was a true revolutionary. She put her trust in the law, our courts and in politicians to help her to get access to a house. But true revolutionaries hardly ever live happily ever after. Unlike the fake revolutionaries who steal our money and spew populist platitudes masquerading as concern for the people, true revolutionaries often die young, penniless and homeless.

Mrs. Grootboom’s death shames us all. Is it too much to ask that her death might galvanize us into re-focusing our attention on the real pressing problems facing South Africa – on poverty and the lack of opportunities facing many people like Mrs. Grootboom who do not know and could not care less about Jacob Zuma or Julius Malema or anyone else driving a Mercedes (or a Porsche)?

Naaah, I am obviously being naive. Who would care about a poor destitute woman when one has so much more important things to do – like getting into one’s C-Class Mercedes to go and give another revolutionary speech about how one would kill or die for a man who took more than R4 million in bribes from a convicted crook.

Recent Posts on ‘Durban Action Against Xenophobia’

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Durban Action Against Xenophobia
July 12, 2008
3am 12 July Message from Kathleen
Filed under: Updates — durbancrisis @ 8:42 am
Tags: Albert Park, displaced people, durban, eThekwini, kwazulu natal, refugees, violence, xenophobia

It’s 3am. I can’t sleep because of what we’ve seen and heard tonight.

This evening, we went to Albert Park to see what we could do. The refugees said that two women were injured. So we offered to take them to hospital. I’ll call these women Sophie and Marie (not their real names). Sophie’s two young sons came with her to our car. There was no room for them and the other refugees assured Sophie they would look after her sons until her return. Sophie was moaning and unable to walk. “Who did this?” I asked the boys in my rusty French? “The police”.

Sophie and Marie moaned softly as we drove to McCord hospital. When we arrived, we were glad we’d opted for McCord’s as the staff treated the two women with great care and compassion. The nurses were shocked to hear it was the police who had assaulted them. Marie’s hands were cut and swollen and severely bruised. She told me that the police had slammed her hands closed in the van door when they were manhandling the refugees into the van to take them to Albert Park. The doctor said that Marie’s hands will be painful for the next six weeks. She also diagnosed her with a chest infection – likely the result of her recent living conditions (many of the refugees are coughing). The doctor told Marie to drink at least a litre of clean water a day to prevent a kidney infection. When I translated this for her, she said “Where will I get water in the park?” I didn’t have an answer.

The doctor who treated Sophie said that she had sustained damage to the ligament of her knee and that she had blood on her knee. She moaned as he drained the blood off her knee. The doctor said she’ll need to use crutches for two weeks and that she’ll be in a lot of pain.

While we were waiting for Sophie, Marie told me a little about her experiences in South Africa. She said that she’s been here for 3 1/2 years and that she has eked out a living selling goods on the roadside. She told a story of constant police harassment of her as a “foreigner” and how she had to keep paying the police “taxes” to be allowed to stay in business. Marie recounted an incident where she was picked up by the police for being a foreigner. They threw her goods on the ground and took her to the Broad Street police station. At the station, they wrote out a long statement in English and told her to sign it. She explained to them that she didn’t really understand English and asked for a French translation. They took her by the throat and crushed her windpipe and forced her thumb onto an ink pad and onto the statement. She couldn’t eat for 4 days afterwards because of the damage to her throat.

When we took Marie and Sophie back to the park, the refugees were huddled together under blankets. A UN rep was there talking to some of them. We told Marie and Sophie we’d be back in the morning with some medicine. We said we were sorry and we came home and tried to sleep.

I don’t know what’s happening in the park right now. I just hope it’s nothing too bad.

I know that all of us in the this group lead busy, demanding lives and that many people have already given so much time and effort to this refugee crisis. I know that’s it’s exhausting and depressing. But, if you can, please let people know what is happening – phone or write to the media and anyone you know you might be able to publicise this issue or offer some humanitarian assistance. If you can, please go to Albert Park tomorrow and ask the refugees how they are and how they think this situation could be alleviated – I think just giving people a chance to talk about what’s been happening is valuable.

Kathleen
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11 July – Refugees dumped in Albert Park
Filed under: Updates — durbancrisis @ 8:41 am
Tags: displaced people, durban, eThekwini, kwazulu natal, refugees, South Africa, violence, xenophobia

Its Friday night. Its cold. It looks a bit like rain.
Somewhere in the dark in Albert Park are about 120 refugees, mostly women and young children.

Its been a long day. We’ve phoned all the numbers. We’ve called in all the favours. We talked through all the angles.
Its late and we (we who already had breakfast and lunch today) are hungry.
Its late and we (we who have homes) want to go home.
There is no good outcome.
Somewhere in the dark in Albert Park are about 120 refugees, mostly women and young children.

These are not young jobseekers from Mozambique and Malawi, doing the African renaissance equivalent of a post-degree work holiday in London. These are documented refugees from the worst civil war of the last decade – a war that has already claimed 4 million lives. A war, as Human Rights Watch has already documented, funded in part by South African mining companies paying warlords in the Congo for the right to plunder the local mineral wealth. These are people who escaped with their lives after their families and communities had been destroyed.

These are capable entrepreneurs who want only an opportunity to live in peace. No Mike Sutcliff, they don’t want the handouts you claim you cannot give them. They just want to be safe. They just want to not be murdered for having committed the offence of already being so desperate that they are prepared to work even harder for even less pay the people around them. They just want the world to not suddenly again turn into an insane nightmare that tries to destroy them. They just want to war to be over.

We don’t understand, they say. We thought there were human rights in South Africa.

I don’t understand either.

Six weeks ago they were attacked. They fled to church. There they waited while KZN province promised to set up a shelter. Nothing happened. Eventually the church left them on the steps of the city hall. The city dumped some them in what had been the old SPCA building. No food. No electricity. Then they evicted them. They were offered 3 days accommodation in a shelter in town. Then they were evicted. They went to the city hall. They were assaulted by city security. The slept outside the city hall. This afternoon police came and loaded them into vans, telling them they were being taken to Albert Park to meet with officials to organise their accommodation. It was a lie to get them into the vans without causing a public spectacle. There were no officials at Albert Park. There was nothing at Albert Park. There is nothing at Albert Park. Nothing except 120 refugees, mostly women and children.

Sipho is quiet but looks visibly upset. He lives a block away. He warns us about the gang that operates on the other side of the park.
I’m worried about the women and children, he says, its not safe here.
We hear stories of murder and rapes in broad daylight.

I don’t understand, he says pointing to the enthusiastic church service that is gathering momentum in the tent nearly. This is my church, he says.
Its not just the indifference of the worshippers, its that their security were told lock the toilets and deny water to the refugees.
Didn’t Jesus feed the hungry, he asks. Doesn’t the bible tell us to protect the weak?

Sipho is visibly upset. He tries to come up with suggestions. We’ve tried them all.
I’ll stay here as long as I can, he says. I’ll come back in the night and see if everything is okay.

These are my people, says Sipho in desperation. These are my people he says, meaning the refugees.

But he means only this: when they sleep out here, they feel the same cold that I would feel if I had to sleep out here. When strangers come with knives and guns, they feel the same terror that I would feel. Those mothers are worried about their children in the same way that my mother worried about me when I was a child.

But Sipho is not the mayor. Sipho is not the head of disaster management. Sipho is not in the Office of the Premier.

Sipho is just a someone who happens to live a block away from Albert Park, who happened to be in there tonight. Sipho is just someone who can imagine what is its like to be cold, and what it is like to be scared, and what a mother feels when she realizes she may longer be able to protect her child from the kinds of nightmares that are not supposed to happen, but sometimes do.

And Sipho, like us, is worried, and slightly desperate, and doesn’t know what to do.

Email from Marijke du Toit – 10 July 2008

>>> “Marijke Du Toit” 07/10/08 8:01 AM >>>

Refugees face eviction from city shelter today

Almost 200 refugees of the recent xenophobic violence, all from the war-torn eastern DRC and Burundi, are facing eviction from a run-down and dirty dormitory style, rent-a-bed ‘shelter’ in the centre of town. Most were taken there by the eThekwini Municipality on June 25, after the church who first gave them shelter could not continue to do so, and after assurances by authorities that better facilities would be found had come to nothing. 35 of the refugees, most of them veterans of a night on the City Hall steps, also arrived at the ‘shelter’ this Monday (July 7). The temporary shelter erected for them in the middle of a building site at Cato Manor by the Municipality had been summarily dismantled by eThekwini disaster management, and MCC (Mennonite Central Committee) had stepped in to pay for a few night’s accommodation. From this Monday, the Municipality has also made it very clear that they will no longer pay for any refugees staying at the shelter. In spite of their earlier undertaking to do so, they will not assist with the establishment of temporary shelter for refugees. As spokesperson Amsi Wilondja for the group from Cato Manor explains, Mr Lungisa Manzi, head of eThekwini Disaster Management, told them explicitly on July 5 that on Monday they would have to find their own way, and that the City will offer them no assistance and no protection. This in spite of earlier assurances by the head of international relations, Mr Eric Apelgren, that eThekwini Municipality would find the refugees appropriate shelter (The Mercury, June 26). “We did not leave Cato Manor voluntarily, but because we were given the ultimatum that the police would be called in ten minutes” explained Mr Wilondja.

The MCC, the local organisation (Mennonite Central Council) funded by the UNHCR (United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees), has also advised the refugees hat it is safe to return to their homes or find accommodation in the city. They think otherwise. They also point to the recent experience of twenty-two year old David M.

David, who is from the eastern DRC, rented a house together with his cousins in Mpumalanga township (Hammarsdale) until a close friend was stabbed in May. The joined relatives and friends then staying at the Glenwood Methodist Church. In early June however, Mr Manzi of Disaster management visited the church and encouraged people to return home. In mid June, the head of eThekwini disaster management visited the Church and encouraged displaced people to go back to their homes in and around Durban. He assured them that it was safe to do so. “He said that government will take responsibility if anything happens” recalls spokesperson for the group of refugees Mr Hulubatu Akyamba. David was back at work in his pavement hairdressing salon when four men started harassing him. Later, when he left for home, they followed him, calling him a foreigner, telling him they were following him home, that everything he had belonged to South Africans. They started to slap him around. When he tried to flee, a large group of around twenty people joined in. At first he thought that they would help him, but then the group was upon him, saying ‘kwere-kwere’. Stabbed twice, he was left lying on the ground. David managed to get up, but could find no one to help. He managed to walk to shops where a Somalian friend took him first to the local clinic, then called an ambulance. He spent a week in Marianhill hospital, then rejoined his cousins in the Broad Street ‘shelter’. On July 3, David and a friend went back to Hammarsdale in order to report the attack to the police at Mpumalanga township police station. He showed the police his Asylum Seeker section 22 papers and, with the help of a friend who knows more English, told his story. David was certain he would know his attackers by sight. “What do you want here? What took you so long?” The police refused to help. They claimed that one can only open a case against a specific person. “If we arrest those guys and then they get bail, don’t you think that they can kill you?” was the most sympathetic response. Eventually, he left.

If eThekwini Municipality have their way, almost 200 refugees will very likely spend tonight on our city’s streets. All of the refugees cannot return home ‘because we are coming from the eastern DRC where there is still confict and war continues even today. As Mr Akyamba explains, the UNHCR will not assist with repatriation to the eastern DRC because of continuing violence there. “And this is what we regret about the govenment here. How can they reintegrate us when we are still on the streets?”

Marijke du Toit

Durban Action Against Xenophobia

Boyte: From Gugulethu, South Africa

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http://blog.lib.umn.edu/cdc/bythepeople/2008/06/post_12.php

From Gugulethu, South Africa

by Harry Boyte

Over the past several weeks, waves of violence have broken out across South Africa, directed at political refugees who have fled across the border from Zimbabwe and immigrants from other African countries. In the desperately poor squatters settlements of the Abahali movement, where many refugees have settled, leaders recognized signs of growing anti-immigrant sentiment months ago and moved rapidly to quell and prevent violence. “No human being is illegal,” read their statement. “Only actions can be illegal.” They determined that people already see squatters in negative terms – “even township people look down on us” – and that they could not afford to further damage their reputations through violence.

The viewpoint and efforts of the squatters testify to their ingenuity and talent. But how did these marginalized people develop the kind of leadership skills that could stop violent demonstrations in a poor township?

I would argue they developed leadership, vision, and generosity of spirit through popular education, or self-directed democratic learning which develops the capacities of ordinary people to become architects of their lives and agents of their own development.

Popular education programs, workers education schools, “people’s education,” learning circles, and democratic arts programs have a long and rich history in many countries. In South Africa, popular education was sponsored by churches, trade unions, civic associations, the Black Consciousness movement, and other groups, and was central to the movement against apartheid.

Ironically, popular education has battled to survive in post-apartheid South Africa. Adult education today is excessively formalized and geared to meeting generic standards, much like “No Child Left Behind” has constricted school curriculum in the U.S. There is a growing sense among many people in South Africa that a vital wellspring of democratic life and culture has weakened dramatically in the process.

This was part of the conversation at a colloquium held June 3 and 4 in the township of Gugulethu. The Institute for Democracy in South Africa (IDASA) brought together 26 grassroots educators, civic leaders, organizers, and public intellectuals to organize for a new level of connection, self-consciousness, mutual support, and assertive public voice among popular educators in South Africa. IDASA, which now promotes democracy building and public work across Africa, has deep roots in popular education (its book, Living and Learning Democracy: Nonformal Adult Education in Sweden and South Africa, details this history and explains popular education and its impacts).

The other participants and I looked at current examples of popular education in South Africa, including the University of Abahlali, which involves thousands of squatters in 34 informal settlements in the province of Kwa Zulu Natal. This informal learning initiative – a true grassroots university – has emerged from the community organizing undertaken in the last several years by the Abahlali movement, which has fought for land and housing, an end to forced removals, and access to education, water, electricity, sanitation, health care and refuse removal. As people have organized and won tangible victories, Abahlali has impacted civic life, gender relations, and governance, and generated many learning efforts.

“Our struggle is thought in action,” said S’bu Zikode, a participant in the colloquium. “We define ourselves and our struggle.” Zikode described how the squatters were critical of projects that pay people to “think on behalf of poor people.”

Abahlali participants have developed several key concepts, such as “living politics,” which they distinguish from “party politics.” Abahlali participants have raised funds and sent dozens of people to the Durban and Pietermaritzburg campuses of the University of KwaZulu-Natal, working closely with the Paolo Freire Institute. Those taking university courses come back and teach what they’ve learned, with extensive discussion about how the knowledge can be appropriately adapted to squatter communities. The University of Abahlali has many other learning projects, including learning circles and a continuing process of debate and discussion about major issues.

There was a sense in the colloquium that basic “founding principles” could be agreed upon – for instance, the importance of developing people’s civic agency, popular power, and democratic education methods, the connection between popular education and broad social change and transformation, the need to challenge the calcification of formal education, and the need for new alliances to create a powerful voice for popular education. There was also a sense that a renewed movement for popular education might help revitalize the “civic vocation” of teachers, once central to the freedom movement. Next steps include planning and organizing meetings, including regional discussions.

The discussions were inspiring and energizing for everyone. And I felt, once again, how much potential there is for trans-Atlantic learning and exchange among those doing public work.

Posted by Harry Boyte on June 9, 2008 07:58 AM

Black Looks: Xenophobia deflects government failures

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Black Looks

Xenophobia deflects government failures
on May 19, 2008
Category: Poverty, Social Movements, South Africa, Refugees, Africa

My friend Beauty at “Nigeria What’s New” posted on the violence against immigrants taking place in South Africa and wonders

why bloggers in the diaspora are not screaming about this horrible human rights issue since the story broke on May 1st.

Good point, Beauty after all if this was happening in Spain, France, Britain or any where else in Europe we would be screaming. In fact I was screaming the other day about asylum seekers in Britain. Talk to any African foreigners and they will tell you their own experience of xenophobia in South Africa. But these encounters are superficial and hide the truth. What is happening is far more complex than is being presented in the reports as violence and xenophobia. Nonetheless, these very disturbing videos here and here and here, fit well with the one posted from last week on Race Hate in Russia. More importantly the videos tell us how governments with the support of the media can and have used immigration as a way of deflecting people away from the real issues and their failure to meet the valid expectations of the people.

This article in the Times [A simple recipe for xenophobia] points to a number of factors that have no doubt contributed to the violence.

What caused the terrible scenes unfolding in our country today: children beaten and displaced, women raped and men left with pieces of flesh hanging from their faces, homeless and hungry and desperate?

What led to a situation where young men were unashamed to stand in front of television cameras and say they will kill foreigners?

We should not be surprised. For the ANC, led by Zuma and Mbeki, the chickens are coming home to roost………….

These people are behaving like barbarians because the ANC has failed — despite numerous warnings — to act on burning issues that are well known for having sparked similar eruptions across the globe.

But the bulk of the cocktail comprises the failed state that is Zimbabwe. The country’s economy has collapsed. Its political leaders, security services and agents are looting the treasury. Zimbabweans are fleeing.

The writer, as in the last paragraph, still externalises the violence by bringing it back to Zimbabwe and Robert Mugabe. But it is not just Zimbabweans who are victims of the violence – all Africans are – from townships to universities. In fact the statement only fuels the violence against refugees. Yes clearly there is a struggle for scare resources such as food, housing and jobs but this does not explain everything. The truth lies more in the total failure of the post Apartheid government to bring about meaningful social change for the masses with the country largely remaining in an economic time warp of white rule. The violence is an indictment on the government which has engaged in an outright attack on the poor in urban and rural areas which is reminiscent of apartheid and what people see is more hardship not less.

The media and the government are naming the violence as xenophobia but the reality is that people have reached boiling point after 14 years of dashed hopes and have now turned on the most vulnerable in their communities, refugees, and foreigners to vent their frustration. This in no way justifies the violence but does go some way to explain the fragility of the country.

I would add that progressive shack dwellers’ movements, like Abahlali baseMjondolo in Durban, the Anti-Privatisation Forum (APF) which has members in some shack settlements in Jo’burg, as well as the Western Cape Anti-Eviction Campaign, have always taken a strong position against this violence. Abhalali has always been clear that it welcomes all shack dwellers in to the movement irrespective of where they come from and indeed has hosted men and women from Zimbabwe’s shackdweller communities as well as reached out to the residents as far away as Cite Soleil in Haiti.

It is a tragedy that such attacks are happening in poor working class communities, where the poor are fighting the poor. But there is a clear reason for this. Many in our communities are made to believe that unemployment is caused by foreigners who take jobs in the country – this is simply untrue. Forty percent (40%) of all South African citizens are unemployed and this has been the case for many years. This is not the result of immigrants from other countries coming to South Africa but rather, the result of the anti-poor, profit-seeking policies of the government and the behaviour of the capitalist class. Such massive and sustained unemployment is a structural problem of a capitalist system that cares little about the poor, wherever they are from/live.