A while back I blogged about not being embarrassed to be South African. This was a post written in response to the xenophobic attacks that took place in South Africa. I stand by my post and am very glad to see that my sentiments have been echoed by action.
It seems as though the community in Paarl has come together and found good out of the bad. They refused to let the violence spread to their area and actively sought out positive change. And succeeded.
By the end of May, after a concentrated effort by local officials and community leaders, 430 foreign nationals that had fled their homes were peacefully returned to their communities. Just 20 people remain at a camp set up in the nearby town of Wellington, waiting for documents that will allow them to return to their native Zimbabwe.
Paarl had a number of factors in its favour: The events in Johannesburg had served as a warning to police in the area, and – like many other parts of the Western Cape – most of the people who fled Mbekweni were displaced by the fear of violence rather than actual attacks.
Many in Paarl also credit the swift work by the police and creative community-based solutions for keeping a lid on the crisis, which simmered on for two months in other parts of the Western Cape.
Fantastic stuff, they even credit the police for sterling work. That is community building for the better. That is Positive Action.
The police identified potential “hotspots” where violence was most likely to erupt but, according to Tommy Matthee, executive director of community services in the municipality, no one thought it would actually happen.
Months after Meda’s attack, a large sign in the Mbekweni police station still instructs officers to report all xenophobic incidents to a specially established hotline. Both Meda and his co-worker, Clements Kabamba, originally from the Democratic Republic of Congo, say they could see that the police had made stemming the violence a priority, and their quick reaction was one of the reasons the two chose not to flee Mbekweni.
Within four hours of the first attacks on 23 May, those sheltering at police stations had been moved into tents set up in a park in nearby Wellington. By early the next morning, the displaced had electricity, blankets, a hot meal and an onsite health clinic. According to Matthee, providing immediate relief was easy compared with trying to figure out the next step: how to return 450 terrified people to their communities.
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