“Charity begins at home.”
This maxim, hurled out by supporters of anti-immigrant outfits like Operation Dudula and March and March, is invoked too often but rarely interrogated. Widely believed to have originated in religious scripture, this phrase is now repurposed to argue for the government to focus primarily on its citizens.
Recently, the lawyer representing March and March in the case brought to the Durban high court by the South African Human Rights Commission, Griffiths Madonsela, echoed this phrase in court:
“We can’t have a state that does not take care of its citizens but does that for the undocumented. Charity begins at home.”
Schools, clinics and even pavements, according to proponents of this view, should be carved out exclusively for South Africans.
It was the popular appeal of this maxim that inspired me to use it as a hook during a leadership workshop with young aspirant politicians from southern Africa.
Schools, clinics and even pavements, according to proponents of this view, should be carved out exclusively for South Africans.
— Phindile Kunene
Throwing this phrase into the classroom and asking participants to take firm positions at three corners of the room marked agree, disagree, or unsure, revealed fascinating, albeit unsurprising, reactions. The South Africans — by far the largest group in the room — without thinking much, rushed to the agree corner.
“Unemployment, no growth, crime, violence,” they shouted when asked to explain their stance.
“We should focus on resolving these challenges before rushing to play big brother to everyone else.” Standing in their corner, South Africans threw another adage into the mix to support their charge for an inward-looking approach: “You can’t pour from an empty cup!”
These sentiments resonate widely.
On the other side of the room stood the disagree corner — primarily made up of young Zambians, Zimbabweans, Namibians and Mozambicans.
This corner reminded the room that the countries that supported the struggle against apartheid and colonialism in SA, Namibia and Zimbabwe did so despite facing internal crises and external threats.
They reminded us that the apartheid regime rewarded this solidarity with a campaign of destabilisation — launching cross-border raids, arming opponents of liberation movements and destroying social and economic infrastructure.
The truth in this is undeniable.
From the 1970s until the late 1980s, states in the region often found themselves at the mercy of apartheid SA’s military adventures, designed to foment chaos and insecurity while entrenching white minority rule. Lives were lost, livelihoods destroyed, and economies devastated.
Although the rift between South Africans and their counterparts from the region was clear, the atmosphere was charged with jests and humour. The same can’t be said about spaces outside this classroom, where the phrase and reactions to it are often accompanied by violence or choice words.
Tempting as it is to see ourselves as exceptions, this inward-looking turn in our politics is not unique to us. It is a marker of the politics of the right worldwide.
In Germany, the far-right AfD gained support on the back of its calls for the fortification of German borders, drawing hard lines about belonging and framing immigration as a threat to national identity and security. The UK’s exit from the EU was also fuelled by Ukip using anti-immigration as its rallying cry.
Ironically, although the right criticises progressives for being too consumed with politics beyond the border, they have not been hesitant to form transnational solidarities of their own. Solidarity and AfriForum’s overtures to Trump are another sterling example of this.
But this retreat of progressive internationalism clashes with our own history and with how the South African government approaches the rest of the continent.
The pan-African handwriting in both foreign policy and G20 priorities is unmistakable. From critical minerals and beneficiation at source to debt relief and disaster finance for developing countries, the pan-African posture runs through every priority.
As president Cyril Ramaphosa has often noted in his public pronouncements, regional integration is not a one-way street. South African businesses have a huge stake on the continent.
Africa, including 16 countries outside the continent, accounts for the bulk of MTN’s 300 million subscribers. Standard Bank operates in more than 20 African countries, and Shoprite is now Africa’s largest food retailer, with nearly 3,000 stores all over the continent.
But stating this is cold comfort for the majority who face homelessness, squalor and deprivation, and who see regional integration as an obsession of self-serving elites.
These facts are also inconvenient for those who treat the state’s failure to redistribute the gains of democracy as a licence to scapegoat migrants.
At the same time, locals’ concerns are becoming harder to ignore, as factory raids reveal a pattern of employers bypassing labour laws and cutting corners to secure cheap labour — acts that only fuel and deepen divisions.
How do we challenge this inward turn in our politics? There are no easy answers.
Perhaps the first step is to question the narrow story we often tell about ourselves. There is value in remembering that SA’s political heritage was shaped by Africans from beyond its borders.
Our trade unions, for example, were built in part by migrant workers like Clements Kadalie of Malawi and James Motlatsi, whose umbilical cord is buried in Lesotho.
Secondly, we can nurture a continental imagination and inculcate empathy from an early age through literature, especially the work of writers like NoViolet Bulawayo of Zimbabwe, who explore themes of home, displacement and belonging.
We should also remember how fleeting the idea of home is. Even within SA, the idea of home is fiercely contested.
People who move to the economic centres from other provinces are labelled “amagoduka”, “zi-moegoe” or “refugees”. This should nudge us to consider the shared precarity that defines movement on our continent.
Before we scream charity begins at home or urge migrants, in the words of Bulawayo, to “sit on one buttock” and “speak in dampened whispers”, we should remember that nothing in our world is fixed.
With unemployment rising, cities declining, corruption entrenched and growth stuck below two per cent, it may very well be us searching for a home in distant lands tomorrow.
- Kunene is an activist, researcher and communications strategist with a strong interest in history, democracy and political culture.