The big question coming out of all the centres of refuge for “foreigners” displaced by xenophobic violence in and around police stations, civic centres and churches is where do we go from here? What plans are on the table to protect, sustain and eventually reintegrate into the community some 30 000 (and growing) displaced people, […]
News/Politics
Posted inNews/Politics
Is Mugabe trying to manipulate the Zimbabwean xenophobia victims?
While it is currently only a rumour, not an unusual occurence in the life of criminal attorneys, there appears to be an attempt by Robert Mugabe to bring home as many exiles as he can, to settle them on land that he has made available for them, and then utilise their votes for the presidential […]
Posted inGeneral, News/Politics
Protest in Paris
Thousands of French filled the streets, carrying placards and banners, singing songs and shouting slogans. This is Paris, May 2008, 40 years after the social revolution known as “May 68” shook France. The uprisings in the 1960s saw a series of student protests and general strikes that caused the eventual collapse of the French government. […]
Posted inNews/Politics
Trouble in paradise
Today Kosovo is the official subject of all sorts of separatist tendencies, real and imagined. The speed with which key European states rushed to support its declaration of independence was dizzying. With the consequences of that support (real and tacit) still unfolding, a number of cracks have already emerged across mainland Europe. Germany’s historic relations […]
Posted inNews/Politics
Writing on the wall for African liberation movements
The children of the revolution are turning against the liberation movement. For now, a handful of insider top thinkers have expressed their disillusionment on the decline of the political integrity of liberation movements. In fact, they have gone on record to say: liberation movements will, ultimately, betray the people! There is a new wave of […]
Posted inBusiness, News/Politics
Affirmative Action may be the under current that fuels xenophobic rumblings
The deep rumbles of discontent that have exploded into an orgy of violence, death and destruction may, rightly or wrongly, be the poor’s version of Affirmative Action. Of course, AA is nothing else but implementation of the culture of ‘putting local blacks, first.’ Its widespread and, ironically, justifiable practice has, over the last decade resulted […]
Posted inLifestyle, News/Politics
Make Africa Day a public holiday
It is Monday 26 May 2008 in Accra, the capital of Ghana, and it is a public holiday. Yesterday was Africa Day, a day that still goes relatively unrecognised in South Africa, and because it was Sunday, the Monday becomes a holiday. The streets are noticeably less busy, the market is relatively quieter. Maybe that […]
Posted inLifestyle, News/Politics
Just how safe is Australia anyway?
Bad things can happen anywhere. And they do happen in Australia. Take the case of 54 year old Brian Gilsenan, a Scottish emigrant who was attacked in an apparently motiveless crime in the Sydney CBD four months ago. He died on Saturday. The police never did track down his assailants; now they are hunting for […]
Posted inNews/Politics
Sad to be a South African …
This past weekend, residents of Masipumelele informal settlement apologised to displaced people driven from their homes in the township during the cowardly xenophobic attacks that have raced through some Western Cape informal settlements since the start of the weekend. One Masipumelele resident said in an interview that “it sure does not feel good to be […]
Posted inNews/Politics
What xenophobia? The word is xenocide
The issue we are facing is not xenophobia as such, but xenocide. In 99% of xenophobic incidents anywhere on this planet in the last decade (however heinous), we do not find xenophobic dispositions turning into a mobilisation and a social movement that kills foreigners. Ours does. It is the habit of my profession to explain […]
Posted inGeneral, News/Politics
Immigrants the scapegoats for ANC delivery failure
The barbaric attacks on immigrants are in essence a protest against a lack of delivery and opportunity. Immigrants are an obvious target; a conductor rod to the storm of discontent that has gathered as inequality, poverty and unemployment in our townships has continued to remain rampant. The seething anger being vented on the streets of […]
Posted inNews/Politics
This is the way the world ends
“They were singing ‘Umshini Wam’ (Bring Me My Machine [Gun]). They came to my place and set it alight. I took my radio and ran. From a distance I watched them loot my place. I saw the sticks and panga’s. I saw my home burning. There was nothing I could do. I lost everything. Like everyone here I lost everything.”