SA�s moral obligation

by Editor · August 20, 2008

South African politicians, like their counterparts elsewhere, have a way of missing the point. This failing reached a spectacular culmination when the provincial government of Gauteng argued before the Pretoria High Court that it had no legal obligation to further assist the displaced victims of the xenophobic attacks in May.

The Gauteng government � and doubtless other politicians and bureaucrats � is wrong to believe that its satisfaction of legal requirements can serve as an absolution from its moral obligations towards these brutalised people. Gauteng�s government, like the national government, is representative of the people who elected them. As such, governments must take responsibility for the actions of the people it leads. This obligation is most obviously expressed by the state�s exercise of law enforcement in accordance with government policy.

Likewise, government cannot divorce itself from the actions of those who committed atrocities against foreign nationals in May�s wave of violence across South Africa. It must assume a moral obligation towards those who were attacked and dispossessed by South Africans. Indeed, in doing so, it would emulate the many South Africans who were appalled by the attacks and gave support to the victims.

The Gauteng government passed the buck when it let its counsel, Mike Sawyer, argue before the High Court that the xenophobic attacks had been perpetrated by �faceless force of people�, not the government which represents and serves these �faceless forces�.

Such shoulder-shrugging reflects the astonishment with which national and provincial governments reacted to the May violence. It is evident that those who govern in South Africa largely do not care. The warning signs of open xenophobia manifested themselves as early as the 1990s. The Southern Cross in an editorial warned five years ago of escalating xenophobia. Non-nationals had been killed randomly for years. Government cannot claim to have been taken by surprise by the eruption of more systematic violence against non-nationals (and, indeed, naturalised citizens). It had done nothing to address an evident problem. Government cannot claim it is not its problem now.

When Gauteng�s government decided to dismantle the refugee camps, inadequate as they were, and told the victims to find their own way, it callously compounded the violation of the victims� dignity. How can the government promise that the reintegration of xenophobia victims into communities will not lead to recurring attacks at some point when the causes and triggers of the violence are not properly understood, never mind addressed?

High Court judge Ephraim Makgoba has ruled that the government has no legal duty to draft and implement a coherent reintegration plan. Maybe so, but it would be a gross dereliction of good governance if the various arms of government fail to create such a plan. It is not good enough to hold thumbs, as the Gauteng government seems to be doing, that a few-weeks-old peace will hold in areas where reintegration (of either courageous or desperate people) had taken place. Should xenophobic violence resume at some point, governments will not be able to escape responsibility.

Of course it must be acknowledged that there seems to be no satisfactory solution to the question of what to do with the victims of xenophobia. In absence of this, the Gauteng administration (and those who share its approach) is negligent in its moral obligation by dismantling the camps and leaving those displaced to their own devices.