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• Published date: 27 May 2024
• Publication title: Otago Daily Times (New Zealand)

SPECIAL REPORT-Mandela’s vision of Black unity fades as South Africa closes door to migrants

(For more Reuters Special Reports, click on Reuters investigates)

By Tim Cocks

JOHANNESBURG, May 23 (Reuters) — Munera Mokgoko was just three when apartheid fell. She can barely remember, much less fathom, the swell of hope that accompanied Black liberation three decades ago, shaped by Nelson Mandela’s vision of social equality and pan-African solidarity.

‘‘South Africa doesn’t have any ubuntu,’’ the 33-year-old said, using a Zulu word meaning humanity, ahead of an election in which the ruling African National Congress (ANC) is pledging to crack down on undocumented migrants from the rest of the continent.

‘‘It’s like we don’t know how to welcome people.’’

Mokgoko’s Tanzanian husband is among many African migrants who have flocked here since the end of white minority rule and met with the colder side of the ‘‘Rainbow Nation‘‘, a name used by Mandela and others in the 1990s to describe South Africa’s aspirations to be a beacon of multicultural harmony.

Public resentment at immigration has become a hot issue in the run-up to the May 29 vote. It’s the first national election in which most people in South Africa – which has a median age of about 28 – have no memory of decades of apartheid, the fight for freedom or the ANC liberation movement’s rise to power in 1994.

Idi Rajebo, Mokgoko’s 34-year-old husband, and thousands of other hopefuls fleeing rural penury in much poorer nations like Tanzania and Malawi have packed themselves into decrepit minibuses, footslogged through bush and bribed border guards to reach Johannesburg, the ‘‘City of Gold’’.

He and dozens of others ended up crammed into a derelict apartment tower that was being taken over – or ‘‘hijacked’’ – by criminals, where toilets overflowed and drug addicts drooped over stairwells.

‘‘It wasn’t nice,’’ said Isaac Simon, 39, a Tanzanian friend of Rajebo’s who ran a kitchen on the ground floor.

‘‘We all had the same idea: make some money and get out.’’

Dozens didn’t get the chance. Nine months ago, the Usindiso apartment block burst into flames, killing 77 people – mostly migrants – and leaving hundreds homeless.

Reuters is the first news outlet to comprehensively piece together the stories of many of the survivors, before and after the Usindiso tragedy. This article is based on interviews with about 50 people, including 19 migrant victims, government officials and lawyers representing survivors in a public inquiry into the causes of the blaze, plus hundreds of pages of documents submitted as evidence to the probe, much of it not publicly available.

The accounts turn a rare spotlight on the dire conditions endured by many Africans who arrive here searching for a better life in the continent’s most advanced economy, and the hostility they say they’ve encountered from South African authorities as well as bands of vigilantes who blame foreigners for taking jobs and services away from local people.

The public inquiry concluded this month that the fire was caused by a South African man who was high on crystal meth when he strangled another local to death and set the body alight with petrol to conceal the evidence of the murder.

The probe also blamed neglect by local authorities for allowing the building to become a hazardous zone, rife with guns, murder, drugs and combustible trash, findings that led to the provincial premier pledging to swiftly implement the report’s recommendations.

’WE FOUGHT FOR A FREE AFRICA’

For those who survived the blaze, the ordeal continues. Seven of the 19 migrants interviewed are sleeping on sidewalks or in makeshift tents. Most of the rest said they were living in even more overcrowded and dirty accommodation than the gutted block they escaped, while four have been deported for not having valid immigration papers. In total, 25 survivors of the fire have been deported, according to lawyers representing them at the public inquiry into the fire and as legal counsel during...