September - 2019

Coordinator’s Note: Xenophobia… is South Africa a crime scene?

The recent wave of violent attacks targeting foreign nationals living in South Africa has shattered the country’s reputation for tolerance and goodwill. The South African government has condemned these acts of violence, but insisted that it was not xenophobia but acts of criminality. Many have blamed senior government officials for triggering the violence due to the reckless statements they have been uttering in public. Many would recall, President Ramaphosa’s statements d

CiZC position on the Xenophobic Attacks in South Africa

The Crisis in Zimbabwe Coalition (CiZC) notes, with regret, escalating cases of violent attacks targeted at foreign nationals living in South Africa. We are particularly worried with the situation unfolding in Johannesburg, where a number of foreign nationals, including Zimbabweans, have suffered physical and psychological harm. We are deeply concerned with the continued resurgence of xenophobia in South Africa and note that acts of xenophobia defeat the spirit and letter of

Xenophobia: The Morning After the Zimbabwe Crisis.

The crumbling of Zimbabwe’s economy with no seeming end in sight has seen a mass exodus of its citizens into neighbouring African countries and a number of western capitals. The mass emigration of Zimbabweans had far reaching socio-economic ramifications in the recipient countries. The country that has borne the brunt of the Zimbabwean Diaspora is South Africa, where an estimated 3 million Zimbabweans are thought to be living and eking for a living. Other neighbouring countri

Xenophobia/Afro-phobia: An Africa Problem that Needs African Remedies

The recent xenophobic/afro-phobic attacks in South Africa point not only to the long-standing problems in the so called ‘rainbow nation’, but to the continent in general. According to media reports, the recent wave of attacks that started in Pretoria and made its way to the central business district of Johannesburg, claimed twelve lives and of these eight are said to be South Africans and the other two Zimbabwean nationals. Xenophobia is truly bad and it is an unacceptable a

Xenophobia in South Africa: When Shall we Call a Spade a Spade?

Doubts and confusion, as well as questions persist around the recent attacks by black South Africans on their black African counterparts from across the continent, who are resident in South Africa. There have been long held disagreements within South African socio-political circles that the attacks are not xenophobic. Such admission would qualify South Africans as xenophobic which, in my opinion, can be as worse as calling Nigerians drug dealers. These social generalisations

Xenophobia in SA, Social Media’s Immediacy in Modifying our African Behaviour

This recent week, if I owned Facebook, Google or WhatsApp and sitting far, far away from South Africa, Southern Africa and Africa itself I would be crunching the data of those that use my applications in those parts of the world. Not literary mathematically crunching at it but waiting for the algorithms to give me key indicators as to how did images and videos of violence by black people against other black people in the comparatively economically rich Gauteng province of Sou

South Africa: a new narrative could tackle anti-migrant crisis

African migrants have once again been targeted for looting, violence and displacement in South Africa. Not only are the events reminiscent of 2008, 2015 and 2017: the narratives explaining them and the measures suggested to deal with them are more or less the same. In 2008, when public attention to attacks on African migrants became global for the first time, then president Thabo Mbeki declared that South Africans were not xenophobic. In 2015 his successor Jacob Zuma echoed s

Coordinator’s Note: Mugabe…“The good men do is oft interred with their bones”

“The good men do is oft interred with their bones” were the words of Mark Antony from his emotional speech at Julius Caeser’s funeral. In translation, Mark Antony is saying that good deeds often go unheralded, or even when noticed, they fade away in people’s memories so that they die with them. It’s a means of observing that good people are many, but that the memory of what they have done for the world often vanishes, but those who have committed evil deeds tend to be remem

Mugabe – A Legacy of Impunity, Death and Poverty

Robert Mugabe died on the 6th of September 2019 at the age of 95. Many people have argued that Mugabe’s legacy is complicated and bittersweet. On one hand, he is viewed as a liberation icon and also a Pan-Africanist with a heart for black empowerment and emancipation. On the other hand, he is also viewed as a ruthless dictator who killed and plundered just to maintain his grip on power. For me, Mugabe is not complex at all, he was a ruthless dictator. Any good he did was not

Robert Gabriel Mugabe: a man whose list of failures is legion

One wishes one could say “rest in peace”. One can only say, “may there be more peace for Zimbabwe’s people, now that Robert Gabriel Mugabe has retired permanently”. Zimbabwe’s former president has died, aged 95. His failures are legion. They might start with the 1980s Gukurahundi massacres in Matabeleland and the Midlands, with perhaps 20 000 people killed. Next, too much welfare spending in the 1980s. Then crudely implemented structural adjustment programmes in the 1990s, la

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