TALES OF MIGRATION AND XENOPHOBIA SA KWAZULU NATAL
TALES OF MIGRATION AND XENOPHOBIA - SA KWAZULU NATAL CHRISTIAN COUNCIL (KZNCC) PIETERMARITZBURG Meetings With The Department Of Home Affairs To Address The Xenophobia Problems .
THREE AREAS OF RISK • Migrants at risk • Perceptions of migrants as risk • Migration, Community and an Ethic of Risk • Choice to Risk for the creation of something new MAJOR AREAS OF FOCUS 1. COMMUNITY DIALOGUES ON MIGRATION AND XENOPHOBIA 2. LOBBYING AND ADVOCACY ON POLICY FORMULATION AND REFORMULATION 3. MATERIAL SUPPORT 4. SOCIAL COHESION 5. COMMUNITY INTEGRATION
Shifting Boundaries of Community and Tribe Immigration, xenophobia and social cohesion Escaping hunger in Zimbabwe only to come face to face with death crossing Limpopo river. South Africa in search of better life Mother & child illegally cross the Beit-bridge boarder into
South Africa Neighbours Seeking Asylum In South Africa. The road is full of risks and challenges – life threatening and shredding the remaining bit of dignity
“Illegal immigrants” at the Lindelani Detention Centre waiting to be deported mainly back to Zimbabwe, Mozambique, Malawi, Zambia, Ghana, Nigeria, Kenya, Namibia
STEROTYPES -Perceptions of Immigrants as Risk
ALLEGATIONS OF ANTI-FOREIGNER RHETORIC
XENOPHOBIC ATTACKS IN JOHANNESBURG
XENOPHOBIC ATTACKS IN DURBAN
Country-wide anti-xenophobia demonstrations
Central Methodist Church in Johannesburg
Methodist Bishop Paul Verryn “…one of the gifts that God gave this country was foreign nationals. They’ve enriched us and enabled us to break the walls between us and the rest of Africa. ”
Humanness - Ubuntu
In Summary – The Choice to Risk: • Openness to encounter with other humans • Making intentional movements toward one another • Storytelling - sharing hopes and dreams, pains and joys of one another – not to ‘fix’ – respect, solidarity, able to stay in the place of ambiguity • Openness to confronting one’s own culture/group/prejudices • Openness to changing – becoming ‘reconstituted’ by the other • Interculturality – immigrants occupy a new space geographically and internally of ‘being in-between’, ‘in-both’, and ‘beyond’ – a new way of being that is in some ways ‘neither/nor’ and ‘both/and’ • Supporting social cohesion and community integration
- Slides: 15