Xenophobia

Several kilometers before the Malawian border town of Mchinji, our minibus was stopped at a police checkpoint.  The stern police officer clad in a brown uniform asked to see our passports, as we were the only white people on the bus and obvious foreigners.  After examining them, he turned his attention to our fellow passengers.  He greeted each passenger in Chichewa, Muli bwanji?  He listened as each passenger replied, stating that they were fine.  As he walked away to open the blockade for our passage, a passenger mumbled that he was looking for Zambians because they have money.  The police officer was not truly interested in each passenger’s well-being; he was just listening to the accents and testing that everyone knew Chichewa language.  It could have been a simple immigration checkpoint, but that passenger’s comment implied that if the police officer had found an African foreigner, only kilometers from the Malawi-Zambia border, he could have invented a problem with that person’s passport or entry stamp and demanded a bribe.      

Zambia has changed a lot since we left in 2011.  Chinese and other investment has created a flourishing middle class.  The former late president, Michael Sata, developed infrastructure by repairing and paving roads strategic to trade and tourism. Copper prices, a major export, have risen again.  New malls have sprung up, with South African fast food restaurants and cinemas with the latest blockbusters from Hollywood and Bollywood.  Even in our village, several people now own vehicles and have new iron sheets on their roof replacing the traditional thatch. 

Neighboring Malawi is one of the poorest countries in southeastern Africa.  Most Malawians are subsistence farmers or small scale fishermen living in impoverished villages.  A small elite drive Mercedes Benz’s around the dusty streets of Lilongwe and send their children to universities in the UK.  But there are very few in the middle of this spectrum, because employment opportunities are bleak.  Forty percent of the economy is comprised of foreign aid, and dependency on aid has stifled entrepreneurship.  Massive flooding in January, which destroyed most crops in the southern region and foreshadows tomorrow’s famine, has also hindered the economy.  With no opportunity besides farming, an uncertain venture in the best of times, thousands of Malawians have been drawn to nearby countries, such as South Africa.

There is a woman in our village who lives with her six children in a brick house bordering the primary school.  Her youngest daughter is a student at the pre-school our organization runs, and is six-years-old.  The father of this girl left to work in a mine in Johannesburg (South Africa) when she was just a few weeks old, and has not seen his children since.  He was sending part of his paycheck back every month for many years, but has since stopped and no longer answers his phone.  His wife has not spoken to him for months, and feared he was dead.  Then she heard through a friend, another displaced Malawian in the rainbow nation, that he had taken a girlfriend and planned to marry her.

Our village is full of women who rely on hard work in their fields and a monthly check from a husband in South Africa to feed their children.  Many of these men have not seen their children grow up.  Last week, there was a funeral for a standard 8 student, a girl being raised by her grandmother, who succumbed to asthma.  Her father is Malawian and her mother is South African, but the girl has lived in hot and humid Malawi since she was a toddler, a climate deemed better for her fragile lungs.  She had not seen her father in all those years, and the only event that reunited them briefly was his arrival for her funeral.

Nearly every family in our village has a member in South Africa.  These are hard-working people who have sacrificed family and community to chase a dream of a better future.  So when South Africans in Johannesburg and Durban, rallying with a Zulu king who urged immigrants to evacuate because they were stealing jobs, began fire bombing and stabbing foreign Africans and burning down their houses and stores, Malawians were outraged and saddened.  The Malawi government evacuated thousands of its citizens, returning them to their peaceful yet impoverished homeland on large buses.  All they had worked so hard for in South Africa had to be abandoned. 

Nearby African nations have rallied against what they view as black apartheid.  Mozambique, which supplies power to parts of South Africa, has cut off its electricity supply.  Malawian activists descended on the Parliament building and the South African Embassy in Lilongwe to protest.  Protests in the city have a tendency to become destructive (Malawians have much to be frustrated about), but we were in this section of the city during this time, and saw very few signs of it.  Although we did drive down Kamuzu Procession Road following a police vehicle with shields and officers in riot helmets, presumably en route to a post to ensure things remained peaceful.  These activists have promised that if there is no response or retaliation for comments made by traditional authorities that incited the attacks, they will shut down South African-owned businesses and products in Malawi.  This includes Shoprite supermarkets, Game stores (South Africa’s version of Wal-mart), and dozens of fast food restaurants.

There are always the stereotypes: Nigerians are untrustworthy, the Congolese are violent, etc.  While the Western world often views Africa as one entity, Africans never forget that they are many diverse people residing in 54 distinct nations.  This is apparent in South Africa, where black South Africans have forgotten their own history as an oppressed people upon whom tremendous violence was inflicted, and turned it on the influx of Africans from poorer nations taking advantage of the bustling South African economy.