The current wave of brutal xenophobic violence gripping South Africa makes me very aware that I am a foreigner in South Africa.  A few days ago, a Kenyan friend living in South Africa, sent me a link of four young foreigners being burnt alive by a mob of dancing South Africans. I cannot remember seeing such naked evil – I was shaken to the core and was traumatised for a long time afterwards. I should never have watched it. I hope I never have to watch anything like that again – on video or in real life.

Yesterday I read online a very moving letter written by an 11 year old Zimbabwean student at Sacred Heart College in Observatory, Johannesburg.  She describes in very graphic language how she has “been scared to go to the shops because people may recognise me. I have stopped speaking Shona in public or too loudly at home because I might be recognised and our house identified. I don’t go to the park to play anymore because I might not come back if someone recognises me. I spend most of my time inside our yard or at my private school because I am afraid to go anywhere and be recognised.”  I can only imagine how alone and scared this young girl must feel.

Samuel , I am a white Englishman in South Africa just as, I suppose, you are a black Englishman in New York.  You have spoken about your many experiences of racism and while I have listened to you with empathy but up until now I had forgotten that I had lived through some similar experiences. Well, maybe not experiences of racism but certainly feelings of being isolated and thinking I was utterly alone.

The night that Bobby Sands died in May 1981 was one such occasion. Bobby Sands was a member of the IRA who died as result of his hunger strike in a British prison because of his demand that IRA prisoners be declared political prisoners (or prisoners of war) as opposed to criminals. The night he died I was attending a prayer meeting in central Dublin (where I was studying philosophy) and cycled back to my community at about 9pm. The route took me past the British embassy where a very angry crowd had gathered to protest his death. Stupidly I decided to cycle past the embassy as it was on my route home. I was within a metre of the angry crowd pushing against the many Irish police that were keeping them from attacking the embassy. The anger was palpable and the anti-British sentiment was unmistakable in the heated chants and the irate eyes of the rioting crowd. Had they broken through the police they would not have believed, with my very English accent, that my name was Seán O’Brien. I was shaking when I got back to the safety of my community glad to have come through the experience untouched. I was never more aware of being an Englishman than I was that night.

A year later in April 1982 the Falklands, a British overseas territory in the South Atlantic, were invaded by the Argentinians which action resulted in the British mounting a military operation to take back the Islands. Interestingly the first person who encountered the Argentinians in this conflict was at Cotton College with me.  Stephen Martin was a member of the British Antarctic Survey and as the British administrator of the island he challenged the Argentinians as they hoisted the Argentine flag on the island – this was the first Argentinian occupation in the region before the Falklands War began.  Given their history of conflict and oppression by the British, the Irish people are naturally antagonistic to all things English, particularly anything to do with the British armed forces. For the second time in twelve months, I felt very aware of my English accent in a country which had suffered so much at the hands of the British. I did not want to go out and mix with people frightened that I would be challenged about what was happening 13,000 kilometres away in the name of the British people.  It wasn’t so much that I thought the British were wrong to fight for the Falklands; it was more that I felt alone in the midst of a nation that was naturally anti-British. This feeling of isolation and the resulting confusion continued – and this may seem very strange – until I went to watch the film Chariots of Fire. With its stirring music and strong pro-British themes it almost gave me permission to regain my pride in being British. I felt happy once again to be an Englishman in Dublin.

I hope that one day that feeling of proudly being a foreigner in South Africa is shared by the 11 year old girl and the many Africans who are currently frightened and displaced from their South African homes.  But even as I write, the inhuman wave of xenophobic violence (and criminal murder) continues to affect many African foreigners who decided to settle in South Africa over the last two decades since the end of apartheid.  

I am also a foreigner in South Africa and I have occasionally been made to feel that. When I first arrived in South Africa in 1985 I shared a train coach to Pietermaritzburg with an Afrikaans man who took an instant dislike to me when he heard my accent; for two hours not a word was said. It was a 12 hour journey and as it was just the two of us in the coach we eventually had to say something. When I told him my name, his face lit up and shaking my hand vigorously said “I am so glad to know you are Irish. You hate the English as much as we do!” Needless to say, for the rest of the journey I was proudly Irish.

The next year when I was living in Soweto, I used to do the shopping at Maponya’s, the local supermarket in Dube, Soweto.  At that time there were probably a maximum of 20 white people out of a population of about one million living in Soweto.  Every time I went into the store, it seemed as if I was the only white person ever to shop there and it felt like I was a moving exhibit walking around for everyone to stare at. That was both disconcerting and frightening because South Africa was in a declared State of Emergency, so tensions were high.  While I was protected by my priest’s outfit or “dog collar” and, strangely in this all-black environment, by my skin colour it was time when I was made to feel very different from those whom I had chosen to live with.

But in spite of such isolated incidents, my thirty years in South Africa have been characterised by acceptance by the vast majority of black and white South Africans whom I have grown to know and love.  From what I have read and heard, my experience was reflected in the lives of the very people who are currently being targeted by the senseless violence. Out of nowhere, this violence has erupted against people who have been an integral part of South African communities up and down this beautiful country.  However, for unknown reasons and fuelled by the deep frustration and poverty of South Africans in those very same communities, the violence continues with no solution in sight. There is little or no political will to address the situation in a meaningful way leaving no other option for the victims but to fight or flee.

As a foreigner I have to ask, will I be next? I do not know. I certainly hope not – and at the moment the violence is largely confined to the central business districts. This is my adopted country and it is here in South Africa that I have freely chosen to settle and live – just like my fellow foreigners who are being killed, maimed and chased away. This is not a proudly South African moment in our history. It is a time of shame. Our country is being torn apart and it is being perpetrated by the poorest on the weakest. When I first arrived in South Africa I could never have seen this day coming.