South Africa: Xenophobia - the art of shifting the burden (to foreigners)

[pampango]

http://www.moneyweb.co.za/mw/view/mw/en/page501877?oid=505053&sn=2009+Detail&pid=287226

Vince Musewe reveals why black professionals hating black foreigners makes no sense.

JOHANNESBURG - There is a term called "shifting the burden" - this typically happens when we fail to address the fundamentals of a problem that we face and our failure leads us to "reframe" the problem by creating a context that justifies our failure, and thereby shifting the burden of the problem to a past event that occurred when we were not part of the problem or to other people who we perceive as responsible in creating our problem. A typical example would be xenophobia - where the perpetrator shifts the burden of the problem of not having a job to hating foreigners and blaming them for his or her problem.

With regard to the South African context, we have in the past seen overt xenophobia which is actualised through violent behavior and happens at the lower income levels- this is somewhat easy to deal with as it is tangible and identifiable. Corporate xenophobia (by this I mean the hate of black foreigners by South African black professionals at corporate level) is more difficult to deal with because you can feel it but you can't touch it.

I continually seek to understand the underlying emotions that result in other blacks hating black foreigners but are quick to accept white foreigners. My contention is that this is as a result of years of the racial conditioning of blacks by the white male under apartheid where white was good and black was evil. The years of this conditioning resulted in the unconscious assumption that a white foreigner is ok but a black one is not, that a white foreigner is most probably a tourist and investor while a black foreigner is most probably here illegally. This is prevalent with especially black police.

Unfortunately, what xenophobia does is that it disempowers the perpetrator. What I mean here is that it externalises the perpetrator's personal problems and takes away the power of that same perpetrator to deal with their perceived personal problem situation as the blame is placed on makwerekwere (slang for "foreigners" in South Africa). This results in the perpetrator not being able to deal with and find a meaningful solution their problem situation and thereby remaining where they are.