Green Shoots: Divide and rule could only tear us apart

Ashley Green-Thompson | Published 1 hour ago

A friend sent me a link to an article about the Creative Bureaucracy Festival that happened in Berlin earlier this month. In its 9 th year already, the event was apparently full of young people and civil servants who “…want to do administration better”. It claims to be the world's largest festival for public service innovation, and is rooted in the belief that a healthy democracy needs a functioning state. The article focused on digital innovation, I suspect because it is relevant to the European context. It's not every day that you are invited to associate creativity with bureaucracy, or that you hear about civil servants searching for innovation, so an event like this is intriguing. It would be great to explore the idea that creative convening of civil servants might help us innovate in finding answers to the governance challenges we face here.

Unfortunately time does not allow me to do this. There is a pressing human crisis developing in our country that occupies my mind completely right now, and I – like many others -  am not giving enough time and attention to things that might unlock insight and help find solutions to our challenges.

This is the problem of misdirection, and the social media algorithms draw our attention away from opportunities for different thinking towards the echo chambers of division and scapegoating. Why would we invest in thinking creatively about our problems when we already know that immigrants are causing them? I’m guilty of succumbing to that. My energy was taken away from researching the origins and philosophies of this Festival by reports of Malawian migrants at Sherwood Park in Durban. I listened to news reports of refugees being forced to leave their homes because of threats of violence against them. And I realised how we are manipulated by the powerful into impotent rage against our neighbours, absolving the monied men from responsibility for the mess. Today I would rather write about other, more positive things, but as Palestinian poet Marwan Makhoul writes: “In order for me to write poetry that isn’t political, I must listen to the birds, and in order to hear the birds, the war planes must be silent.”

A journalist friend who guided me when I started Green Shoots two years ago writes eloquently on social media about our history, of the struggle for liberation, of Mandela and Tambo, and of the solidarity African nations showed those men. And then he asks, rhetorically I think, where it is agreed that everyone from Africa will come to South Africa when it is free? Where is this written pact? I don’t understand why he asks this in a time when South Africans are being mobilised to action – deadly action - against Africans living here.

Another friend from back in the day with whom I share a love for reggae quotes a Bob Marley song: “Divide and rule could only tear us apart / In every man’s chest, there beats a heart / Soon we'll find out who is the real revolutionary / And I don't want my people to be tricked by mercenaries”. The image accompanying this post depicts the unemployed, working class masses on one side of a divide, and the bourgeoisie and immigrants on the other. Oh, the irony – Bob’s song being quoted is called “Zimbabwe”.

In both these instances, positive icons and imagery are being reworked to advance an agenda that is anti-human, that is anti-African. Imagine Bob, himself a migrant in exile from Jamaica, condoning this assault on poor people? Imagine Mandela, hosted by Ethiopia and others, endorsing the violence against migrants because nowhere did we write down that you are welcome here once we are free?

There are ordinary South Africans who are rallying to support migrants as they flee the homes they’ve made here. 300 civil society organisations have registered their opposition to this dangerous mobilisation against African migrants in the country. These are organisations that work throughout the country, many of them standing in solidarity every day with local communities in their struggles against unemployment, poverty, and governance failures that have betrayed the vision of justice and liberation our forebears lived and died for.

Another friend posted this on social media: “Maybe we should all start using the word ‘people’ instead of ‘foreigners’, ‘immigrants’ or ‘refugees’.” Social media is powerful in shaping people’s thoughts, so let’s be conscious of how we are influencing and shaping popular thought. Let’s not leave it to the trolls and hatemongers. And where we can, let's show solidarity for those who are in danger now just as we do for others at other times.

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