President Emmerson Dambudzo Mnangagwa’s spokesperson George Charamba has dismissed reports that Zimbabwean opposition parties stirred xenophobic attacks that rocked South Africa few years ago.
The national daily newspaper, The Herald reported that former South African President Thabo Mbeki disclosed that the xenophobic attacks that rocked his country in 2008 was caused by Zimbabwean opposition parties who wanted people sent back so that they could vote and probably defeat ZANU PF.
Addressing students at the University of South Africa in Johannesburg last week, President Mbeki singled out the 2008 xenophobic attacks on Zimbabweans, saying there was an intelligence document with names, dates and venues where the Zimbabwean opposition perpetrators met to plan an operation to drive Zimbabweans back home to vote out the then President Robert Mugabe, a plan that failed.
“Historically, the African community here (South Africa) has never been xenophobic about other Africans. So, 2008 all manner of trouble breaks out in Alexandra township in Johannesburg, attacks on these foreigners, particularly Zimbabweans.
“Then it spread elsewhere. Xenophobia, Afrophobia. So, I say when I saw that, as president, I recognised that this is not Alexandra township. Alexandra, for decades, has had Zimbabweans and Mozambicans, and so on. There was never ever this kind of conflict.
“Why? There is a mistake we made as government, and that is not to declassify an intelligence document about what happened in Alexandra in 2008. That thing was organised to drive the Zimbabweans out of the country back to Zimbabwe because there were elections in Zimbabwe,” the paper reported Mbeki as having said.
However, Charamba says Zimbabwean opposition parties had no capacity to cause xenophobic attacks.
He writes:
I have listened to former President Mbeki’s interpretation of 2008 South African xenophobic violence against Zimbabweans and other foreign nationals with infinite implausibility.
While I agree that the goal was to force a reverse migration of Zimbabweans already resident in South Africa, hoping these would make a dent on Zanu PF support, I totally regard and dismiss as implausible claims that give agency to local opposition.
Simply, the local opposition had no such capacity, except as legitimating accessories in a complex sub-regional equation targeting Zimbabwe. The local opposition could never have such capacity to singly project themselves extra-territorially.
They even struggled to mobilize Zimbabweans in South Africa for a vote or registration towards a vote. Was the xenophobic attack orchestrated? Certainly. Who by?
It was a very complex operation involving very big powers who worked closely with local South African interests, including even individuals inside the ANC, although this was not the ANC position.
In fact the goal was to make Zimbabwean immigrants an issue in South African politics, hoping that would force ANC to change its policy towards Zanu PF and its Government. In fact those forces continue to be active as Mbeki speaks.
South Africans – blacks – will always have a foreign spectre invented for them so they are never given a chance to look at home both for problems and solutions.
The terrible thing about the Mbeki narrative is that it falsely cedes to effete locals – Zimbabwe opposition – agency for what, in reality was, has and will always be an international conspiracy against Zimbabwe and the ANC itself, in Defence of white propertied interests and broader geo-political interests in Southern Africa.
