XENOPHOBIC ATTACKS- THE BLACK MAN'S WAY OF DOING THINGS- SO WHO'S NEXT?

Zimbabwe: Who Are the Next Victims of Xenophobic Attacks?
The Zimbabwe Guardian (London)

OPINION
27 May 2008
Posted to the web 27 May 2008

Itayi Garande

THE current xenophobic attacks in South Africa are a bad reminder on the history of the country and the nature in which they are being carried out is very disturbing.

Young South Africans, between 16-25 years are killing 'foreigners' including Mozambicans, Zimbabweans, Nigerians and many others using methods alleged to have been employed by military men in the Rhodesian security forces and also employed during the Apartheid era.

One of the methods we saw used by these young people was necklacing (i.e. the burning to death of selected individuals, with the aid of inflammable liquid and/or motor tyres).

According to film maker and presenter (then reporting for South African Broadcasting Corporation) Max du Preez: "Between September 1984 and August 1989, 771 people were necklaced or doused with fuel and burnt to death. The myth perpetuated by the State then was that this was an example of African brutality. The truth we know now, is that this repulsive form of killing was first started by white Rhodesian security forces in the 1970s and then brought to South Africa by the security police. ..."

However, in 1997 SABC was found guilty of contravening the Broadcasting Code by the Broadcasting Complaints Commission of SA for publishing that statement.

This was after a complaint by a complaint by the Flame Lily Foundation -- "a non-profit organization ... run for Rhodesians by Rhodesians," according to its website.

Du Preez's statement was made after footage of a woman being burnt, stoned and kicked to death by a mob in South Africa was shown on SABC.

What is surprising is that the same method talked about then is now being used -- eleven years later by young people who were barely adults in 1984-89.

This method has been in existence for a long time in South Africa.

The practice was employed during disturbances in South Africa in the 1980s and 1990s, and was used against alleged criminals by "people's courts" established in black townships as a means of circumventing the apartheid judicial system.

'Necklacing' was also used to punish members of the black community who were perceived as collaborators with the apartheid regime. These included black policemen, town councillors and others, as well as their relatives and associates.

The practice was frequently carried out in the name of the African National Congress (ANC), although the ANC officially condemned the practice.

At the last ANC Congress we saw their youth drunk, aggressive and openly displaying firearms and read about the sexual harassment that went on.

We saw the young thugs heckle Mosioua Lekota -- South African South African Minister of Defence, who was imprisoned at Robben Island Prison for challenging Apartheid.

The linking of the current problems in South Africa should be done cautiously. These youths are not only manipulated by 'dark forces,' but are also impatient with the current pace at which wealth is being distributed in an 'independent' South Africa.

The pictures we see in South Africa today are not new. What is new, are the targets.

In 1985, we saw the pictures of Maki Skosana -- "Her body had been scorched by fire and some broken pieces of glass had been inserted into her vagina," according to an investigating committee.

"After having seen so many 'necklacings' on the news, it occurs to me that either many others were being performed (off camera as it were) and this was just the tip of the iceberg, or that the presence of the camera completed the last requirement, and acted as a catalyst in this terrible reaction," said photojournalist Kevin Carter in the mid-1980s.

Carter -- "one of the integrands of a group called the Bang-Bang Club, a group of four friends, photojournalists that dedicated themselves to exposing to the eyes of the world the brutal regime of the South African apartheid" -- later committed suicide two months after he received a Pulitzer Prize for Feature Photography; for a 'necklacing' photograph.

He was 33 years old and left a goodbye note:

"I am depressed ... without phone ... money for rent ... money for child support ... money for debts ... money!!! ... I am haunted by the vivid memories of killings & corpses & anger & pain ... of starving or wounded children, of trigger-happy madmen, often police, of killer executioners...I have gone to join Ken if I am that lucky."
http://allafrica.com/stories/200805270780.html