Schwartzerwitz: We were chased like dogs ...

Sunday, November 29, 2009

We were chased like dogs ...

Anthony Muteti worked tirelessly to improve his community. He started a development forum to find jobs for young people and was instrumental in having the streets cleared of raw sewage. (from TimesLive)

But this week Muteti, his wife, children and about 70 other families who hail from Zimbabwe and Malawi were chased from their homes "like dogs".

The men and women lived in Hout Bay's Imizimo Yethu informal settlement near Cape Town. After three Malawian men were arrested for the rape of a three-year-old girl last Friday, people turned on the families. They were given a few hours to pack their bags and "get lost".

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Every Pogrom needs an Armband....

Welcome to Schwartzerwitz. The inevitable consequence of 4 million illegal immigrants arriving in South Africa. More desperate than our local folk they are willing to work longer harder faster for less. The immigrants are more reliable than South African unskilled labour and have outcompeted the local folk. No matter what anyone says it's not FAIR on our locals. Adding 4 million hungry mouths to the country has exacerbated the rocketing food prices felt across the globe. Adding 4 million potential electricity users to the mix has undoubtedly worsened the electricity situation. Having 4 million people send home money to their family drains the economy of money which should stay within the borders. Adding 4 million people and not registering them as taxpayers has cost the country billions. What chance does our government of ridding the country of shacks as per the Millennium Development Goal when 4 million immigrants build/rent shacks. Murambatsvina in Zimbabwe....? Just move to a shack in South Africa. On an individual basis this site condemns violent acts against individuals. However as a collective the illegal immigrants deserve no sympathy and should be deported back from whence they came. These people are economic refugees - "not real refugees" - and they are(generally speaking) in South Africa illegally.

kwerekwere.

The inside cover of my Oxford English dictionary features a word with which I have become all too familiar: the word is kwerekwere.

(It may be more familiar to you with one of its vernacular language–dependant prefixes prepended — the Sotho singular being le– and plural ma–, the Nguni singular being i– and plural ama–). This word is used to refer to black (in the morphological sense) Africans who are not South Africans — South African being defined as Sotho, Nguni, Venda and Tsonga ethnic groups (by that measure the Swazis, Batswana, etc. would be South African?). This word has a very negative sting to it and is often used with contempt. From what I gather it has undertones which speak of how black Africans are believed to be sub–human, too dark and have a pungent smell.