Amid Broken Dreams, Poverty Breeds Hatred

S. African Violence Fed By Local Anger Over Post-Apartheid Hardship

RAMAPHOSA INFORMAL SETTLEMENT, South Africa -- This was the kind of place that was not supposed to exist in the new South Africa. All black. All poor. Dense, squalid, dirty, angry -- with charred patches of earth where men once stood.

The violence that flared here, and in communities like it all over the Johannesburg area during two weeks of mob attacks that have left at least 56 people dead, has carried echoes of this nation's notorious past. But the rage is not old. It is new, born of the broken dreams of South Africa's post-apartheid era.

As a black business elite has grown and traditional townships such as Soweto have edged into the middle class, destitute squatter camps such as the Ramaphosa Informal Settlement have proliferated, swelling with millions of new arrivals -- many from beyond South Africa's porous borders. These places became crucibles of poverty and, it is now clear, hatred.

Here at the bottom of the nation's notoriously rigid social hierarchy, poor, black South Africans complain they are falling behind Zimbabweans and Mozambicans, who always seemed to get the best jobs, the nicest houses, the most desirable women.

"I'm so tired of this place," said David Maupi, 35, a lean, calloused man who has failed to find steady work after years of searching. "I don't have food. I don't have a job. I've got a wife and two children. I want to work."

Economic strain alone does not explain the extent or the brutality of the recent attacks, in which tens of thousands of people, most wanting nothing more than a steady job and a better future for their children, have been chased away by spears, guns, planks of wood, lengths of pipe and worse.

But the ferocity of the violence has reminded South Africa of how desperate these forgotten places have become amid massive job losses, rising food prices and rampant crime. Here, the nation's legacy of ethnic rivalry gradually hardened into widespread dislike of foreigners, who were seen as rivals and regarded as inferior "Makwerekwere" -- a derogatory term used for immigrants from elsewhere in Africa.

This toxic combination first caught fire in the tin shacks of Alexandra township, one of the nation's densest and most crime-ridden. In a matter of days, the violence spread across the city, the region, the nation.

"Never since the birth of our democracy have we witnessed such callousness," President Thabo Mbeki said in a nationally televised address Sunday night. "We must accept the events of the past two weeks as an absolute disgrace."

Authorities have been investigating the possibility that the attacks were organized, but no concrete evidence has been publicly presented. Extensive interviews among both victims and supporters of the attacks suggest they may have been organic, with news of violence in one area inspiring mobs in others, especially as it became clear that the assaults were successful in pushing immigrants out. At least 10,000 Mozambicans have returned to that nation, which has declared a national state of emergency.

Outside the ruined home of a Mozambican immigrant here in Ramaphosa, a group of young South African men lingered on a recent day along a street covered with broken glass, bits of garbage and the black, sooty remains of fire. All were unemployed, and though some expressed reservations about the viciousness of the attacks, none seemed to regret the exodus of foreigners.

"Maybe if they leave, we'll get jobs," said Gezani Velly Makolele, 26, a thin, dour man who survives by taking odd jobs fixing cars but who has not had steady work since moving here in 2002.