By Phakamisa Mayaba
An eerie video is doing the rounds on TikTok. In it a man with an Iskhakhaka (traditional Zulu shield) strapped to a forearm and carrying a sjambok walks briskly through what appears to be a taxi rank in Newcastle, KwaZulu-Natal. When he comes across street vendors, he viciously lets loose with his sjambok. Occasionally, he is polite enough to first ask a question, ostensibly to weigh up the hawkers’ proficiency in the vernacular.
Mostly, though, the physical appearance of his victims seems enough to determine their status as undocumented – and undesirable – foreign nationals. Or that they are Shangaan, which is synonymous with verboten in the vulgar epistemology that’s increasingly gaining traction amongst the go-home lynch mob. Never mind that amashange are, for the most part, descendants of Soshangane, a Nguni chief who fled north during Shaka’s bloody conquests. In these hateful times, they are often reduced to undesirables who use allegedly muti on women and will readily accept slave wages from stingy employers.
The witch-hunt has barely begun, but more sensitive nerves are already on edge. One video that tugs at one’s heartstrings shows a Zimbabwean barber being accosted outside his salon. He’s visibly frightened, and by the time he has been ordered to shut down his business, the listlessness in his face is so unmistakable that when he holds his young child tightly to his chest, you scroll on, because it becomes so emotionally taxing to watch.
It’s painful, smacks of Hutu-ism, and seems like a PG trailer of the gratuitous barbarism that 30 June – the deadline declared by various anti-immigrant groupings for undocumented foreign nationals to leave the country — has in store, should government fail to move fast enough.
These are just a few in a stream of startling videos circulating on the socials that stand out because of the sheer – I don’t know exactly what to call it – impunity, heartlessness, latent intolerance, or pent-up rage and disillusionment that’s building fast, and likely to culminate in bloodshed and twisted bodies.
It is difficult to make sense of the movement March and March, yet another confrontational wing of the ‘abahambe’ cabal. Are they genuine patriots simply running their mouths; Zulu ethno-nationalists doing the bidding of faceless political puppet masters; or a ghetto gestapo eager to round up and eliminate suspects in the dead of night? On the one hand, they frame themselves as peaceful protesters who just want South Africa to work for the benefit of its citizens.
However, the claim to Gandhi-esque pacifism soon falls flat when one sees the random and unprovoked vigilante whippings and beatings that are being recorded and circulated like some browbeaten warning – FAFO. F***k around and find out. When protesters are recorded scaling, breaking into, and raiding buildings purportedly occupied by foreign drug dealers, it’s only a matter of time before things spiral out of control.
With the flaring up of similar organisations, it’s hard to tell exactly who’s who, and what else they might be getting up to when the cameras have been switched off.
And, if you thought that the raids were confined primarily to KwaZulu-Natal, with a smattering in parts of Gauteng and Eastern Cape, you’d better think again. On Saturday 23 May, March and March embarked on its maiden march in Bellville, the teeming urban hub north of Cape Town for many poorer communities on the Cape Flats, both formal and informal. The eNCA cameras showed a credible turnout for the organisation’s leader, Jacinta Ngobese-Zuma, who linked the problems that have long beset Western Cape communities — such as drugs and gang violence – to the criminal activities of foreign nationals.
The growing anti-immigration campagin has catapulted Ngobese-Zuma — a popular media personality and events organiser — into national prominence. On Monday 25 May, at a media briefing in KwaZulu-Natal touted as the ‘real state of the nation address’, Ngobese-Zuma presented the government with a list of eight demands, and called on President Cyril Ramaphosa to ‘address the nation’ on the issues raised before 30 June, failing which people would ’take to the streets’.
The demands included the immediate deportation of all illegal foreigners, and forcing them to pay for the cost of their deportation; strengthening the Border Management Authority; erecting a security fence on the northern border; declaring a state of emergency in respect of illegal immigration, which was ‘tantamount to the invasion of the country’; and reserving all township businesses for South Africans.
Nkosiikhona ‘Phakel’umthakathi’ Ndabandaba addressing followers. Source: Facebook.
Earlier in the week, a group of protesters led by Nkosikhona ‘Phakel’umthakathi’ Ndabandaba and the profane Ngizwe Mchunu – a duo whose capability to mobilize amabutho (the Zulu traditional regiments) has gained them hero status on the web – marched on the Somali Embassy in Pretoria. Noticeably unperturbed by the diplomats and a police contingent facing them, they reiterated the alarming ultimatum that all undocumented foreign nationals should leave by June 30.
‘Mr Ambassador,’ began Phakel’umthakathi, ‘all the Somalis that are not here legally, please deport them. Find them and deport them … Somalis must respect us … you don’t go out with an under-age girl. Your Somali guys that are owning shops, they are sleeping with young girls.’
He also vowed that he would sooner die than to see the country being taken over by Somalis, who, he says are notorious for smuggling arms to hijack ships. In other videos, Phakel’umthakathi has also expressed that when push comes to shove, not even law enforcement will have enough muscle to contain their** wrath.
On the political front, the messages have been mixed. President Cyril Ramaphosa has come out to say: ‘While appreciating the hardship in some of our communities, we have strongly condemned those of our citizens who took the law into their own hands.’ During a SkyNews interview, EFF leader Julius Malema has called the anti-illegal foreigner mobs ‘charlatans,’ ‘extortionists’ and ‘disruptors,’ reducing their escapades to ‘clownish’ behaviour.
Echoing his principal’s sentiments, ANC secretary-general Fikile Mbalula has declared: ‘the rule of law must dictate what must actually happen. People cannot take the law into their own hands and render us a banana republic. The state must intervene.’
Some members of the chattering classes say this is yet another scheme by monopoly capital to pit black Africans against one another. Others are predicting the birth of something akin to the Arab Spring in which the people will rise up and bring about drastic and revolutionary change.
To this layman, however, if not nipped in the bud, this could turn out way uglier than those who are calling for the expulsion of these foreign nationals even realise. There is simply too much money riding on the spaza industry alone to think that these operators will be driven out without fighting back. Estimates value this industry at around R190 billion a year. Add to this the informal liquor trade, and you’re talking serious gwaap.
And with money comes a certain amount of power – power to influence, and power to arm oneself. Whether or not illegal foreigners will start leaving by 30 June remains uncertain. However, what is abundantly clear is that the streets in some areas will not be safe for anybody, whether immigrants (legal or illegal) or South African citizens.
Featured image: Jacinta Ngobese-Zuma addressing the March and March media briefing in KwaZulu-Natal on Monday evening. (SABC News)