"I'm not a xenophobe. A xenophobe is someone who hates outsiders more than is necessary..."
AS Bill Clinton's road show rolled into Cape Town on Thursday, a little-known body called Human Rights Watch released a report slamming the "alarming" rise of xenophobia in South Africa.
I tend to be suspicious about bodies that give themselves names such as "Human Rights Watch" without indicating their constituency or their backers, particularly when they time the release of their reports to coincide with important occasions for maximum propagandistic effect - such as with the Clinton visit.
Case in point: the Johannesburg-based "Citizens Commission for Human Rights" is funded by the Church of Scientology. Not that I have a problem with the scientologists concerning themselves with human rights, but rather the inherent deception in not revealing that the "citizens commission" is not representative of citizens in general.
Similarly, there's the group calling themselves "Doctors for life", (the implication being that other doctors are for death), whose agenda is centred on an anti-abortion crusade for primarily religious reasons.
And let's not forget that not so long ago, the National Party government's censorship board was called the "Bureau for Information". (Marthinus, you were there. You remember this.)
So let's put Human Rights Watch's pedigree on hold for now and look at their report which claims:
- That government is ignoring serious human rights abuses against poverty-stricken black foreigners.
- That there is abuse of detainees and extensive corruption by policemen and home affairs officials..
- That asylum procedures are marked by pervasive bribery, arbitrary and uninformed decisions, inadequate appeals and long waiting periods.
Xenophobia is real. It manifests itself in the association of Nigerians with drug-dealing, of Zimbabweans with car-hijacking syndicates, and so on.
What Human Rights Watch is describing is not xenophobia. Our human rights are abused by criminals on a daily basis. We are all victims of police and bureaucratic corruption as we are of pervasive bribery, arbitrary and uninformed decisions (like the president being forced to testify in the Sarfu case), inadequate or non-existent appeals and long waiting periods.
But xenophobia has to be fought. And the first step towards combating this deep dislike for foreigners is to give substance to Thabo Mbeki's dream of an African Renaissance by addressing the shortcomings of our immigration policy.
Take the case of Newton Kanhema, Zimbabwean journalist on the Sunday Independent, who was ordered to leave the country by bureaucratic enforcement of outdated legislation.
Kanhema practises a fly by the seat of your pants never let the facts get in the way of a good story type of journalism that I find frequently irritating and sometimes even distasteful.
But Kanhema was also the journalist who took the initiative by conducting a substantive interview with Winnie Madikizela-Mandela at the height of the TRC hearings into the activities of her football club. The interview was prominently carried throughout the country. Many in government circles expressed their disapproval.
Now Kanhema has been hit with deportation. The government has taken the expedient route of allowing the law to take its course, and in so doing has rid itself of the pinprick irritation of Kanhema's reporting.
But it's a bad decision. Forget the perception that government is stifling a journalistic voice of dissent. We are reinforcing the "us and them" view of our neighbours — ridiculous when one considers that until driven out by Shaka's mfecane, Kanhema's countrymen and women were South African.
Get him back, dammit!