After the rainbow: following the footprints of the May 2008 xenophobic violence in South Africa

In May 2008, African immigrants were attacked across South Africa. The violence was captured in a horrifying image of Ernesto Alfabeto Nhamuave, a 35-year old father of three from Mozambique, who was burnt to death. He had arrived in Johannesburg just three months before the 18 May attacks, hoping to find work in the building industry. The image of this human fireball drew haunting reminders of necklacing during the apartheid years (The Times 2008). The May 2008 xenophobic attacks resulted in the death of just over 60 people, a third of whom were South Africans. According to official reports, some 342 shops were looted, 213 gutted, and 1384 people arrested (Crush et al. 2008, p. 11). Much has been written on the factors that led to the violence of May 2008 and the response of the state and civil society to the violence (Human Sciences Research Council [HSRC] 2008, Misago 2009). However, once thousands of immigrants had been bundled off to their countries of origin and the camps dismantled, the researchers and media began to write about the violence in the past tense. Alongside this, both the state and much of civil society stopped any support work once those displaced left the camps. This Briefing traces developments after the May 2008 attacks with a particular focus on the impact on the lives of African immigrants. In a limited number of areas the state sought to reintegrate those displaced. In many of the instances the South Africans rejected attempts at reintegration. Journalist Victor Khupiso wrote of how ‘on Friday nights in Ramaphosa squatter camp, it’s time for what locals call their “Kwerekwere-Free (Foreigner-Free) Society” campaign’. In haunting detail Khupiso chronicles how groups of young people spread out over the camp to hunt down foreigners. One of the young people told Khupiso that he could ‘proudly say foreigners had decided to leave our area because they know what would happen to them if they are found. They would burn. Hell is waiting for them. We have stored some tyres’ (Khupiso 2008). These were not empty threats. The example of Francisco Nobunga who fled the Ramaphosa shack settlement in Ekurhuleni during the May xenophobic attacks was a clear signal. He returned to his dwelling with his South African-born wife, Sylvia Nosento, and survived three weeks before he was killed. He produced a South African identity document, as demanded by his attackers, but it had a Mozambican address (The Star 2008). Nyamnjoh vividly unpacks the significance of the use of the word Kwerekwere in his 2006 book, Insiders and Outsiders: