From Medieval times churches have been considered places of refuge or sanctuary. “Sanctuary”, derived from the Latin sanctuarium meaning a container for keeping something intact, is a holy place or a safe place. Churches and embassies had, until last week, one thing in common: if you entered either, seeking refuge, you would be assured of protection. To violate a foreign embassy is to violate the integrity of a foreign state.

The Central Methodist Church is one of the best-known sanctuaries in contemporary South Africa. It has housed immigrants since the outbreak of xenophobic violence in 2008. A few days ago it became the latest Church to be violated by South African authorities.

In 1972 the world watched, horrified, as the South African Police stormed St. George’s Cathedral in Cape Town where students were protesting against Apartheid. In the Apartheid era, police targeted a number of Churches; Regina Mundi Catholic Church in Soweto still bares the scars of such raids. When the might of Apartheid brutality swept through townships, local communities and activists found protection in churches. Police, in those dark days, acted with impunity and violated churches.

Forty years on, history repeats itself as the same old tricks and tactics make a comeback. According to authorities, they received a tip-off indicating that there was “criminal activity” (a similar sentiment was used by ministers in the Apartheid government to justify police action) taking place in the Central Methodist Church. This tip-off took place (coincidentally?) after a fresh spate of xenophobic attacks and in a place where immigrants sought refuge from violent attacks against them. The police (and their mighty military entourage) arrived with no warrant by all accounts. Later, it’s reported, they denied Lawyers for Human Rights (LHR) access to the detainees at Johannesburg Central.

The government believes that Operation Fiela is an answer to dealing with xenophobia in SA. Raiding the Central Methodist Church symbolically suggests, as many commentators have pointed out, that immigrants are the problem. But the complex problem has its roots in the fact that many people in this country are angry, frustrated and hopeless because each day brings a new struggle to survive. The way a society treats immigrants says much more about the state of itself than what it does about foreigners.

Operation Fiela is a smokescreen for the real issue: a government that is failing its own people because of a serious deficit of leadership. Unemployment in South Africa is running at more than 25% and most of the unemployed are young people (66% of the unemployed are reportedly youth). There is little hope of the economy improving as the country’s power generation problems persist. This has a negative impact on local industry and gives foreign investors the jitters. You cannot grow an economy without energy. And so the spiral continues. The real problem with Eskom (like many state-owned enterprises and government in South Africa) is the fact that they do not have effective leadership. The appointment of political cadres, not competent leaders, continues to plague many of the country’s institutions. All these factors are the real issues that beset the country and have given rise to the lethal cocktail that has manifested itself in violent attacks on immigrants.

Now, in a desperate attempt to redirect the focus and perpetuate the myth that immigrants are the problem, we slump to another low: raid a place of sanctuary. In any community there will be people who have no regard for the rule of law. Some of these may have been staying in the Church. The vast majority, however, are people with hopes and aspirations who, ironically, want a share in “a better life for all.” Many of them were women with children. Just a few weeks ago, when I accompanied a delegation that visited a camp that had been setup for fleeing immigrants in Primrose, I wondered what the scenes of violence were doing to the minds of many little children who were wandering around the camp. Now I’m left wondering how traumatised children process that fact that they were woken up in a church and shoved around by police. Are churches and police not both meant to protect?

Minister of Home Affairs, Malusi Gigaba, insists that Operation Fiela is not about foreigners. He says, “It would be incorrect of government to sit back and say we’ve seen a spate of violence taking place, illegal weapons and unlicensed firearms brandished in public, and we say we’re not going to do anything.” Violence, illegal weapons and unlicensed firearms are not a new problem in the country. Why has the government done little about this over the last few years? The last line of his statement reveals a deeper reason, the real reason: “There were also reports of arms being possessed by foreign nationals.” Again, immigrants are fingered as the root cause of yet another social problem.

In a meeting with senior government officials, after the outbreak of the recent xenophobic attacks in the country, religious representatives were told that government desires to work with faith communities in order to solve this complex problem. Suggestions were made by officials of what religious leaders should preach about from their pulpits to help foster social cohesion in the country. Government and religious leaders present agreed that more collaborative approaches to the problems of the country were needed – government working with faith organisations and vice versa. Kicking down the doors of a church and brandishing weapons in the early hours of the morning is not quite the way religious leaders envisaged this collaboration.  

The operation will, no doubt, continue and the country’s borders will, we are warned, be more strictly controlled. There is no problem with having good, well managed border controls. The problem is that the most sophisticated border agencies are not going to solve South Africa’s crisis of education, health, crime, unemployment, etc. When Operation Fiela comes to an end and all illegal (and legal) immigrants have been hounded out of the country we will still face the same problems. Until the leadership deficit in the country is addressed and a concerted effort is made to lift the majority of poor South Africans from living in abject poverty and out of their misery, nothing will shift.

It’s also unfortunate that newly elected DA leader, Mmusi Maimane, has bought into some of the shallow analysis of xenophobia that the government has touted as a way of deflecting responsibility. Maimane, responding to a question on the recent xenophobic attacks by CNN anchor, Christiane Amanpour, said first that he believed the ANC had failed to institute “effective border control.”

What will Operation Fiela achieve? It will victimise many who are already victims and trick voters into believing that the country’s problems are being systematically solved. It will exempt government from taking responsibility for the cocktail that creates fertile ground for xenophobia – a lack of leadership, a culture of corruption, giving serious attention to embattled institutions that are pivotal (Eskom, the SABC, SAA, Transnet, the Post Office), and mealy-mouthed commitments to growing the economy. When it’s all over the political elites will drink Johnny Walker and congratulate themselves. They will then be on the lookout for a new scapegoat. The lasting legacy of Operation Fiela will be the violation of the little that was still sacred to desperately score political points and perpetuate myths. That’s all. DM

Photo: Refugees from xenophobic violence sit on a bus as they wait to leave the Germiston City Hall for a newly-constructed camp in Germiston, east of Johannesburg, South Africa, 02 June 2008. EPA/JON HRUSA