South African harassment of immigrants hits home

South African native Sylvia Manda, here with her daughter, was arrested because police said she looked like an illegal immigrant.

By Charlayne Hunter-Gault
CNN JOHANNESBURG BUREAU

KATLEHONG, South Africa (CNN) -- On the way to her teaching job in the South African town of Katlehong, 33-year-old Sylvia Manda was arrested. Her crime: not looking like a South African.

Two black policemen stopped her and demanded that she read two words in the Zulu language. A Zulu as well as a Zulu-language teacher, she complied.

Then she was asked to produce a passport. Manda, a South African native who has never traveled outside of the country, does not have a passport.

"They started assaulting me," she said. "They were saying, 'You foreigners, when you come to South Africa, you become clever.' Then one was twisting my hand, the other was punching."

Manda said that a third policeman, who had been watching from a patrol car, got out and joined the fray. "He started pushing me and pulling me up," she said. "They held me in the car. It's where, I think the short one, hit me with the gun."

Johan Lourens, the principal of Manda's school, rushed to the police station after he heard about the arrest from some students who witnessed it.

"Eventually, they went to the back where she was being held in a cell," Lourens recalled. "They brought her forward and, you know, she was full of blood. She'd been knocked on the head, and her whole face and all her clothes were full of blood."

One of the policemen involved in Manda's arrest said that he suspected her of being an illegal immigrant because of her dark complexion and facial characteristics.

"Africans coming from (elsewhere in) Africa obviously are a shade or two darker than South Africans," explained Zonki Mojodina of the South African Human Rights Commission. "The system of apartheid was that the darker you were the harsher the system dealt with you, and we're still carrying the legacy of those times."

Shaddrack Gutto, a law professor and a new immigrant to South Africa, said the apartheid policies of the old regime left a legacy of the "divide-and-rule" syndrome: an attempt to make South African blacks feel superior to those in other parts of Africa so that they would not unite against the white establishment.

New immigrants face rising resentment no matter what their profession. The local hawkers association, for instance, has called for legislation to outlaw immigrants from selling on the streets.

Experts and government officials said that most of the xenophobia is directed at blacks -- not white immigrants. Part of what is fueling those attacks, officials said, is the perception that black immigrants are taking jobs from locals as well as committing crimes.

Charlayne Hunter-Gault is CNN's Johannesburg bureau chief and correspondent.

Back to top