The Alexandra Crisis
Chaos in Alexandra continued to escalate through the weekend, though people are doing the best they can to live their lives as normal and many claim not to have noticed the violence that has largely been driven by xenophobia. Calm prevailed on Tuesday morning, but one wonders if the tenuous peace will hold. Stranded and fearful, hundreds of foreign residents of Alexandra are squatting at the police station until either alternative accomodations emerge or some guarantee of calm prevails.
Obviously the root of the violence in the cramped Johannesburg township is the grim nature of much of urban life. The economically vulnerable need to find someone to lash out at, and foreigners make for a logical scapegoat. Xenophobia, though real, thus becomes an exciuse and a catchall justification for what poverty has brought.
May 14th, 2008 at 4:07 am
True, but I have seen rich/wealthy people being xenophobic as well as I have seen poor and marginasied people being all but xenophobic. Hence, the economical factor is only a part of the explanation.
The Evolving Ape
May 18th, 2008 at 1:00 am
Geoffrey –
I think you misread me, actually. I don’t think this is about the poor being xenophobic at all, but rather about a shorthand narrative being constructed in which the poor are being depicted as being xenophobic. And many may well be. But I think anyone who’s been reading here for a while knows that I think that the rich, the wealthy, and the, well, white, are usually the purveyors of xenophobia.
Thanks for reading and for writing –
dc