Scapegoating can’t be tolerated

Dehumanising people because they are somehow different to you is the scourge of the world and it’s at the core of the Holocaust, the Rwandan genocide, and so many horrific mass murders or world disasters caused by human beings.

It’s wholly unacceptable behaviour, and growing in South Africa. And at the helm is our government, which seems to be leading the charge.

Just opening the pages of the Sunday Times on the weekend was nauseating, as I read about Limpopo Health MEC Phophi Ramathuba blaming a Zimbabwean woman and her countrymen for problems in healthcare, saying it was their fault that there was such pressure on public hospitals.

She’s unrepentant, and this attitude is just another reflection of the national Afrophobia that exists, in which South Africans blame mostly Zimbabweans for joblessness, economic woes, and now problems in the medical arena.

It doesn’t take much to poke holes in her claims, which are 100% inaccurate, leaving her and so many others to create this falsehood through their Afrophobia.

The truth is that South Africa’s public healthcare system is overburdened, but not because of foreign nationals who constitute about 8% of the total population. The problems are far more about the shortage of personnel, facilities, beds, high workloads, and low morale in public hospitals and clinics.

It also has so much to do with mismanagement of funds, badly governed systems, corruption, and underfunding, according to a report by Corruption Watch.

And if it’s true that women are taking life-threatening chances to get to South African hospitals to get treatment or give birth, then what kind of people are we to even consider denying them?

We’re a country that prides ourselves as being humanitarians and a people who fought for human rights, but somehow this gets lost in translation when it comes to Afrophobia.

I understand that the pressure on our public healthcare facilities is overwhelming, but had the Guptas and their cronies in government not syphoned off so much money, our healthcare system wouldn’t have been jeopardised. There would be money for it.

I’m grateful that our president seems to be putting his foot on the accelerator of corruption fighting, but unfortunately the money is gone. So, Zimbabweans are made to suffer.

Our economy isn’t in good shape, and there are too many people without jobs. But can you really blame Zimbabweans for that? It’s hogwash that Zimbabweans steal South Africans’ jobs. So many of those who are complaining about this still wouldn’t have work even if there were no Zimbabweans here. Let’s be real.

It’s always easy to blame someone else, especially if it means you can scapegoat them for something you aren’t doing or aren’t doing properly.

At the end of this year, about 200 000 Zimbabweans, all of whom have been legitimately working and living here for decades, are suddenly going to be here illegally. If they continue to live and work here, the people employing them will be eligible for huge fines. From being 100% legitimate, contributing members of society, they are being criminalised.

Sound familiar? Something similar happened in Germany at the end of the 1930s, and it was to our people.

Jews appeared to be a threat to working class Germans, much like Zimbabweans appear to be to working class South Africans. The Jews were doing well, while many Germans weren’t. The government there and some leaders here saw a way out in scapegoating these people to appease the population – or themselves.

The South African MEC wouldn’t apologise to the Zimbabweans she humiliated and denigrated. Neither did the German government. Same same, but different. Only in Germany, it didn’t stop there…

This behaviour is appalling and frightening. What does it say about our country? What of the Zimbabweans who are feeding whole families back home on meagre domestic workers’ salaries? What of the heads of departments in top companies in South Africa who are Zimbabwean? Do they lose their jobs? Who’s qualified to replace them?

The bottom line, though, is what kind of people are we to do this to fellow human beings? How do we legitimately treat people this way?

How do you legitimise people with permits and allow them to live here happily and build their lives and then suddenly take it all away?

You know, the African National Congress, our ruling party, once represented freedom fighters, human rights activists, you name it. They all fought a good fight. They were heroes. They had all the right ideas, and their decisions were based on what was honourable. However, since they have been in government, this has slowly but surely been eroded. It has been replaced by some apparently heartless leaders who can do this to their neighbours – people they have been living side by side with for decades.

These neighbours come from a country once not too different from ours, but one which has taken an economic and national nose dive.

There are so many ways to deal with this situation, which I do understand aren’t simple. We could even work with the Zimbabwean government to find ways to increase employment for them and us. The ideas abound, but all that’s happening is a blanket increase of hatred and abuse by a country that prides itself on its human rights record.

When a government legitimises a working class’s hatred or denigration of others, we’re on a losing wicket. It does not bode well!

As the Jewish community, we need to stand up and say no. We can’t let this happen under our noses because we have experienced this before.

I understand that we also feel afraid of the impact it might have on our situation, but how do we allow people to be treated like this without saying anything?

I can’t help but compare this situation to what’s happening in the Middle East. Just this week, Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi said, “If Israel decides to carry out its threats to destroy Iran’s nuclear programme, it will see if anything from the Zionist regime will remain or not.”

It was an unadulterated threat of annihilation.

Did the world say anything in response? Was there an outcry?

It’s time for us all to look around and weigh up what’s acceptable and what’s not. And if we see unacceptable behaviour, we need to stand up against it. Not cower. Never cower! Stand together against Afrophobia and the dehumanisation of those who are different.

Shabbat Shalom!

Peta Krost

Editor