Xenophobia on Trial at Boekehuis: Dark Tales and Hope
NB: See the bottom of this post for a video clip of Simao Kikamba singing “an immigrant’s lament”.
Johannesburg readers crammed into Boekehuis at the most recent “Saturday Voices” panel discussion, to hear authors Veronique Tadjo (originally from the Cote d’Ivoire) and Simao Kikamba (originally from Angola) talk about xenophobia in literature.
Ably chaired by store manager Corina Van der Spoel, the event offered an opportunity for those present to rethink and renegotiate their positions, assumptions and ideologies.
Van der Spoel introduced the topic with a series of salient readings and reflections, starting with an excerpt from the Goldstone Report of 1993/4, which noted the different ways that perpetrators, victims and bystanders react to massive human rights abuses – the callousness with which innocent people are murdered, raped and tortured, and the shallow excuses produced by the perpetrators for such brutality.
“He finds similar behaviour everywhere,” said Van der Spoel. “The situations are universal. Throughout the world one must recognise that any people, anywhere, has the potential for evil on a massive scale. And all victims, whoever they may be, need the opportunity to heal. No continent, no region, and no people are immune from it.”
Many folk sat on the floor or perched on the shelves as she spoke.
Van der Spoel also quoted from the Southern African Migration Project’s World Values Survey on International Attitudes to Immigration, which she described as “astounding”. In calibrating attitudes to foreigners it was found that South Africans held the harshest anti-immigrant views among the 29 nations surveyed.
“More than 20% of people surveyed here wanted all foreigners barred from entering the country on any grounds, compared with 13% holding this view in Britain, 11% in China, and 4% in the USA and Mozambique.” The numbers left us stunned.
Before introducing the authors, van der Spoel referred to Phaswane Mpe’s novel, Welcome to Our Hillbrow, published in 2001, as the place where she first encountered the perjorative, “makwerekwere” – an onomatopoeic word that mimics the so-called unintelligible sounds of foreign languages. She read an excerpt from the book, where the narrator engages with Cousin, a police officer, who is complicit in the exploitation of foreigners, extorting money from the men and sex from the women.
The books of van der Spoel’s guests also address xenophobia: Going Home by Simao Kikamba was the first book to take it up from the point of view of an outsider living here. KiKamba was born in northern Angola, during the middle of the liberation war against the Portuguese. At age two, he emigrated to Zaire on his mother’s back, and returned in 1992 with the Bicese peace accord between UNITA and the MPLA. In 1994 he was abducted in front of his wife by UNITA. After his release, he emigrated to SA where he lives and works.
In Going Home, van der Spoel reflected, it’s both moving and disturbing to register the disempowerment inherent in the refugee’s position, “How much you are delivered to the powers that be, to the goodness of people, or their badness, their evil.”
Veronique Tadjo, originally from the Cote D’Ivoire, is the author of numerous books. The Shadow of Imana was written after a visit to the scene of the Rwandan genocide at its tenth anniversary. She is currently head of the French Department at Wits University.
Tadjo recalled that 1994 was a year of bizarre extremes for Africa – South Africa’s liberation was a brilliant light while at the same time the Rwandan genocide cast a long dark shadow on the continent. She first visited Rwanda to look at how people were living, post-the genocide, in 1998.
She read an extract about a lawyer from Kigali endeavouring to deal with problem of justice and how to categorise responsibility:
He comes from another African country. He has already renewed his contract a number of times. He says that no-one will ever really be able to understand what has happened here. Trying too hard to rationalise, you get lost in false truths. He’s not involved in politics, he has his own opinion, of course, but that has nothing to do with the need for his presence here.
‘How can we ensure that this never happens again? What is needed are strong institutions: justice and national reconciliation.’ He repeats, ‘Justice is what is needed, a credible justice. If people do not recognise themselves in this justice there will be no national reconciliation.’
He believes in the death penalty. He concedes that there may be arguments against it but he thinks that it needs to exist to deal with crimes of genocide. In his opinion, the international tribunal based in Tanzania, in Arusha, has a lot of resources and errs on the side of being overly humanitarian. You feel that what he would like to say is they have all the time in the world and can afford to have lofty sentiments about their work. Meanwhile however, the Rwandan prisoners are rotting in cells in run down and overcrowded prisons -130 000 prisoners. Even the USA doesn’t have as many. If you calculate that a 1000 prisoners maximum can be tried in a year. How many years are we looking at?
He does not choose whom he will defend. Sometimes they are victims, other times they are accused of having perpetrated the genocide. There are four categories of responsibility: men and women in positions of authority, that is to say, (1) those who ordered or encouraged the massacres by manipulating the people – among these are priests, teacher, intellectuals, politicians, mayors, etc.; (2) All those who raped or killed on their own initiative; (3) those who obeyed orders, who killed under duress, those who perhaps did not kill but who wounded or mutilated; (4) Those committed economic crimes like pillage, destruction, theft and disposition.
Tadjo offered this as a way of understanding that all people don’t have the same responsibility for what happens in times of extreme violence. “It’s not possible to simply judge the perpetrators,” she said.
Simao Kikamba shared the history of his parents’ traipsing between two countries: his grandparents who, losing seven children at birth, believed there was a bad spell on the area, left the Congo and moved to Angola, where his father was born and survived. Likewise, a daughter, Simao’s aunt, survived. “Years later, after I was born, my parents returned to the Congo. This tells you about the arbitrariness of borders. My maternal grandmother technically lives in the Congo, but she goes to farm in Angola. What does this mean? It is senseless.”
Kikamba writes about being an outsider, and read an extract from Going Home about kebab-maker who is robbed of his wares by a gang of thugs. After kicking over the stall that they have cleaned out, the narrator is told to “fuck off to his own country”.
“As a child from Angola, going to school in the Congo, people referred to me as a foreigner – not violently – but I felt I didn’t belong. When I returned to Angola at 26, then I was referred to as a foreigner there. You go back home, returning from exile and you’re treated as a foreigner. These are the experiences that led me to writing the book.”
Kikamba preceded his reading with a song, saying, “I want you to conclude from the tone whether it is a sad or happy song. If it sounds happy, then you know the refugee is in the promised land. This song is about the plight of the refugee in South Africa.”
“Listen for yourself. Draw your own conclusions,” he said.
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Video: Simao Kikamba sings the immigrant’s lament
- Fuzzy? “Not available” – ? Watch on BOOK SA TV
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A vibrant discussion session followed with penetrating questions and salient answers exchanged between panel and audience. It was heartwarming and inspiring to see South Africans and visiting Europeans talking earnestly and engaging deeply on this thorn in our collective flesh. While various interpretations were offered, it was reassuring that all who engaged in the dialogue seemed willing to be vulnerable while simultaneously determined to find solutions.
Apr
