A vehicle supposedly belonging to a foreigner, after a night of violence. Nonhlelozenkosi Nsingo/Demotix. All rights reserved.It has been a couple of months since
the last outbreak of xenophobic attacks targeting African foreign nationals
occurred in South Africa. This latest attack, like the one that occurred in May
2008, resulted in many deaths and left thousands displaced as they fled from the
violent attacks. The brutality attracted a great deal of media
attention, which tended to assume that only two major xenophobic attacks have occurred
in South Africa so far. However, there have been numerous attacks on African
foreign nationals since the 1990s, with most of the attacks concentrated in the
urban areas of Johannesburg, Cape Town and Durban.
Common to all these attacks is the narrative
“they steal our jobs and our women”. This narrative, however, is nothing
new, and has been used numerous times in nationalist discourses against immigrants
in South-North (SN) migration. Here too a misleading impression arises that these
challenges were due to visible differences between foreigner nationals and the
locals. But little attention has been given to South-South (SS) migration,
where such narratives are also prevalent.
Any thinking about xenophobia and its
impact on women’s
lives also tends to focus on the extreme violence that
it produces. But if the targeted ‘other’ in the South African context is
African foreign nationals, the argument for visible differences between
foreigners and locals as a mitigating factor does not hold much water. So it is
also important to look at how other salient forms of xenophobia are experienced,
and what such analysis can reveal about the actual situation of women in South
Africa.
“They steal our jobs and our women”
Thousands in Durban hold peace march against xenophobia. Reinhardt Hartzenberg/Demotix. All rights reserved.From the onset, interesting questions about this
narrative revolve around who is being addressed and by whom? Browsing through
the pictures and reading the media reports, it is apparent that both men and women were victims of these xenophobic attacks. However, foreign males seem to be the main audience
that is being addressed, and in a way that renders the foreign women in this narrative
invisible. This might be due to the fact that the majority of migrants in the
region are proportionately male.
However, there
has been a marked increase in female migration in the last decade. Most of the women
who move to South Africa do so to join husbands who migrated here for work. They
become victims of these attacks because their migration to South Africa to join
their husbands represents the settling down of foreign men in South Africa. Foreign
men are no longer seen as temporary visitors, and this is thought to have a serious
and long-term impact on the host country. It follows that foreign African women
are not seen as a threat until their presence is linked to foreign African men.
These are not the only changes threatening the
position of men in South African society. Since the legalization of same-sex
marriages in South Africa in 2006, there has been a negative and often violent
reaction towards black lesbians in the townships in the form of ‘corrective’
rape. The discernible link between xenophobic attacks and these corrective rapes,
is that the perpetrators of this violence target those who threaten their
position as men. South African women also participate in the attacks, but again
only South African male voices and frustrations are heard in their coverage,
while the women remain largely invisible and unheard. This pattern of male
frustration has been on display in South Africa since the 1990s, with increased
violence towards children and women in the form of rape, domestic violence as
well as the ‘corrective’ rape of Black lesbians. All of this behaviour seems to
raise serious issues pertaining to masculinity in South Africa.
Women and nation building
Zanele Muholi. Flickr/Thierry Ehrmann. Some rights reserved.Charlotte Sutherland has argued
that this sort of claim – “they steal our women”- points
towards patriarchal undertones of
anxiety about men’s ability to provide for their families. But there is a more
general factor at play: the way South African society views women. Women in
South Africa are seen as possessions to be used by men as they see fit. This too
might explain why foreign African women are not visible to commentators: they
are not seen as a threat until foreign African men are implicated in the story.
The same assumptions seem to be at work in the violence towards black lesbians
in the township. The idea behind “corrective” rape is that it must ‘cure’ lesbians of their sexual orientation. Those
who rape lesbians have both the right and the ability to affect this change.
Such views not only strip women of their dignity, but also of their
capacity as agents able to assert their sexual orientation, move to South
Africa as individuals, or choose their own partners. Moreover, they suggest
that women’s assertion of their sexual orientation or their acceptance of
marriage with foreign men crosses unacceptable national boundaries as imagined
by South African society. These women are seen as betraying their “nation”
by not conforming to their roles.
Meanwhile, it is important to remember that there are South African men who
assert their sexual orientation and there are those who are married to African
foreign women and yet both these decisions do not provoke the same kind of
reaction. This hypocrisy takes us back to colonial times where relationships
between European women and local men were seen as threatening to the imperial
order of things and yet relationships between European men and local women were
at best tolerated.
Nonetheless, it would be remiss to blame men alone for the production of
such narratives. South African women are complicit in their production. As
mentioned earlier, South African women support this narrative by engaging in
the attacks of foreign nationals, and also by chastising local women married to
foreign nationals. For many local women married to foreign nationals,
xenophobia is a daily experience in which they worry about their foreign
partners as they go off to work because the attacks can occur at any time. One
woman taking her sick children to hospital was asked by the female nurses, ‘why
are you giving these people residence papers’ which she felt was intended to
degrade and discredit her choice of partner.
These negative views also extend to women who decide to come out as lesbians.
A female government minister walked out
of an exhibition by Zanele Muholi which featured nude photographs of lesbian couples
arguing that, “It
was immoral, offensive and going against nation-building.” All these examples
demonstrate the ways in which women are viewed and treated, not just by men but
by other women in South African society. Women are not seen as independent
South Africans but as wives responsible for the building of the nation. Those
who challenge this mission are punished for not conforming.
