Saturday 18 April 2015

Xenophobia in South Africa. Does 'Mississippi Burning' Help Us Understand?

Earlier this week Daily Maverick published an op-ed by Stephen Grootes covering the horrific xenophobic violence currently hitting South Africa under the title, When the economy suffers, xenophobia thrives. I agree with everything Stephen Grootes has written there, most especially what he says about impunity, poverty and feelings of hopelessness in bad economic times. I strongly recommend that you link to and read that op-ed before reading this blog any further.

Insightful and enlightening as the piece is, I can't help getting the feeling that Grootes is holding back, perhaps understandably. It's as if he has set the stage for an explanation; all the props and actors are there and even some historical context, but the dialogue is missing.

Perhaps the missing dialogue can be found in the following dialogue from the movie Mississippi Burning.

Ward: Where does it come from, all this hatred?

Anderson: You know, when I was a little boy, there was an old Negro farmer lived down the road from us, name of Monroe. And he was, uh, - well, I guess he was just a little luckier than my Daddy was. He bought himself a mule. That was a big deal around that town. Now, my Daddy hated that mule, 'cause his friends were always kiddin' him about oh, they saw Monroe out plowin' with his new mule, and Monroe was gonna rent another field now they had a mule. And one morning that mule just showed up dead. They poisoned the water. And after that there was never any mention about that mule around my Daddy. It just never came up. So one time, we were drivin' down the road and we passed Monroe's place and we saw it was empty. He'd just packed up and left, I guess. Gone up North, or somethin'. I looked over at my Daddy's face - and I knew he'd done it. And he saw that I knew. He was ashamed. I guess he was ashamed. He looked at me and he said: 'If you ain't better than a n****r, son, who are you better than?'...He was an old man just so full of hate that he didn't know that bein' poor was what was killin' him.