Mr Potosi your analysis of the recent murder of a Ugandan in South Africa is based on a number of erroneous readings of South African Affairs.
First, there is no evidence of a campaign of violence against foreigners in South Africa. Foreigners in South Africa are indeed subject to a lot of violence, but South African natives are even more so. The sad truth is that the centuries of repression and segregation creted what is probably the most violent society on earth. Though some of the "toughs" who perpetrate the violence pay lip service to a political struggle, their violence is in fact apolitical, they attack any easily available victim. When the races were segregated goegraphically under apartheid the majority of victims were black, now everyone, black or white, foreign or native, is fair game. The huge majority of violent incidents in South Africa have always been straightforward criminal violence with no discernible political motive. Ugandans in south Africa are well aware of the danger, and many have been obliged to hire armed guards. Second, to blame the hard times and high crime rates on the ANC is simply unfair. The ANC has administered the nation for only eight years. The country they inherited had been run for a century under laws designed to prevent the formation of viable or stable black communities at any level, these laws created cities with no communal norms besides violence. The township uprisings of 1976-89 which finally overthrew apartheid also had an unfortunate side effect. The generation of urban blacks who spent their teenage years on the streets during that struggle ended up without an education, this coupled with rapid population growth and a generally stagnant economy meant that the black townships at the end of the apartheid era were in desperate economic straits. No power on earth could make more than a small improvement to this in eight years. The ANC may have failed to meet it's ambitious goals, but they have in fact done more to advance the housing, employment, water supply, sanitation and health services of black South Africans than most knowledgeable people believed possible in 1994. Your claim that the apartheid era govts created a separation between South African blacks and other Africans is untrue. Thousands of laborers were hired from outside South Africa during the apartheid era. Once the Bantustans were formed there was a need for skilled workers which was filled from African countries, including Uganda. As Ugandans who travelled down south in the 1980s will tell you, immigration officers at Joburg airport would ignore the stamp "not valid for South Africa" in Ugandan passports once they heard that one was headed to the Bantustans. Your clims about the northern frontiers of South Africa are also untrue. Under apartheid any African attempting to sneak across the heavily mined and electrified border was shot on sight as an ANC infiltrator. Today hundreds do so daily in search of work. South African blacks, themselves short of jobs, are of course resentful. This resentment will inevitably be exploited by some politicians but to label it an offical policy of the ANC is wrong. Kigongo
