Oni, Afolabi Ajibola
PhD Student
Language and Literary Studies Department,
Babcock University, Ilisan, Nigeria
08036126690
&
Professor Mobolanle Ebunoluwa Sotunsa
Language and Literary Studies Department,
Babcock University, Ilisan, Nigeria
Professor
07060947611
Abstract
In xenophobic South Africa, more attention is given to the women in terms of discrimination, especially in any state of unrest. In this paper, we seek to explore how the female characters from the other countries, as presented in Mpe’s Welcome to our Hillbrow, are viewed by the South Africans. There are clear manifestations of female oppression and exploitation. More so, we will explore how the female characters in the text under study are exploited through blame games for the happenings, even when they are not guilty or aware of the crime. The female experiences and their reactions to xenophobic actions are the core focus of this paper.
Introduction
Paul Zeleza (2002) asserts that violent conflicts of one type or another have afflicted Africa and exacted a heavy toll on the continent’s societies, polities and economies, robbing them of their developmental potential and democratic possibilities. Furthermore, Ali Mazrui in his Prologue Conflict in Africa: An Overview noted that the violence in Africa is rooted in the colonial experience of Africans. However, the anti-colonial wars were less bloody than the postcolonial wars and conflicts. While some may argue that the pre-colonial war in Algeria cost more than a million lives at the hand of the French government, one would not be quick to forget that the Second Sudanese Civil War lasted for 22 years (1955 – 1972) and roughly two million people died according to New York Times of 23, January 2008. The same publication also reiterates that the Second Congo War which lasted for four years (1998 – 2003) had between 1.5 to 2.0 million deaths. The Nigerian Civil War of 30 months (1967 – 1970) was also said to have recorded about 2 million deaths.
Riots and violent attacks have been the result of hatred targeted at immigrants; for example, in the Eastern Cape in early 2007, resentment towards Somalis from locals for supposedly stealing trade and jobs led to rioting that caused the death of over three dozen Somalis. In a similar but more serious case, rioting in Zandspruit due to the mere presence of ‘illegal’ immigrants, culminated in more than 100 informal Zimbabwean dwellings being burnt down.
Vanguard Newspaper of 26th February, 2017, in the last 23 years, no fewer than 200 foreign nationals have been killed or maimed in xenophobic attacks in South Africa. As such a reprisal attack may engender war if this conflict situation is not carefully managed. Against this background of conflict situations, this paper seeks to evaluate the female experiences in the xenophobic situation in South Africa as portrayed in the text in order to examine the prejudices. More so, there has been a lot of awareness on the idea on xenophobia in South Africa and this is a phenomenon in the 21st century post-apartheid era. This study seeks to explore the detrimental effects of xenophobia on particularly females in the text. This study delves into the experiences of female characters and how they were able to survive the situations. This paper would also evaluate the after-effects of the xenophobic experiences on the female characters.
Additionally, this paper is to explore the female experiences in xenophobic setting. Examine the specific prejudice towards females in a xenophobic setting, discover the coping strategies for females in xenophobic settings and evaluate the effect of the xenophobic experiences on female characters. More so, this research would be qualitative and literary text analysis would be carried out. This would involve the literary analysis of the primary text. The aim is to explore the connection between xenophobia and feminism. This study would be supported by critical works from library, archival sources and the World Wide Web. The theoretical framework would be feminism.
Feminism in this Discourse
Ann Dobie (2012) views feminism as ‘… the social construct that enforces same norm for all’ irrespective of gender. It is evident in history that women are treated as inferior creatures. This definition varies from one person to another as Charman Nahal (1991) in his article, ‘Feminism in English Fiction’ defines it as ‘…a mode of existence in which the woman is free of dependence syndrome’. The Greek ecclesiast John Chrysostom (AD 347 – 407) called women ‘a foe to friendship, an inescapable punishment, a necessary evil.’ Furthermore, the Holy Bible blames the fall of the man on the woman – Eve in the creation story. Alexander Pope (16888 – 1744) as cited in Ann Dobie that ‘Women have no character at all’. Based on the foregoing, Mary Wollstonecraft published A Vindication of the Right of Women in 1792 where she portrayed women as an oppressed class regardless of social order. She wrote,
I earnestly wish to point out in what true dignity and human happiness consists—I wish to persuade women to endeavour to acquire strength, both of mind and body, and to convince them that the soft phrases, susceptibility of heart, delicacy of sentiment, and refinement of taste, are almost synonymous with epithets of weakness, and that those beings who are only the objects of pity and that kind of love, which has been termed its sister, will soon become objects of contempt…. I wish to shew that elegance is inferior to virtue that the first object of laudable ambition is to obtain a character as a human being, regardless of the distinction of sex. (5)
Virginia Woolf buttressed Wollstonecraft’s position in 1972 in her somewhat experimental novel ‘A Room of One’s Own’ and in the Chapter, Shakespeare’s Sister Woolf creates an imagination of what would happen if gifted females in the renaissance were educated and given recognition like their male counterparts. She argues that their writing would be better if she was given a room of her own to express herself. For the feminist critics, the portrayal of women in texts to reveal the misogyny lurking in the text is critical. Furthermore, feminist critics also examine the distinctive characteristics of female experience in contrast with earlier perception of the female using male templates standards and models. This is called gynocriticism. Feminist critics are also concerned with the language choice of the author and how these lexical items portray the females as inferior.
In addition, the feminist background also indicates how problems are well-defined. For example, according to definition in Theoretical Perspectives on Gender and Development written by Jane L. Parpart et al inequality results from “the need to establish unequal incentives to motivate the most talented people to do the most important jobs efficiently in society,” other definition from the same book also says that the inequality results from “the practice of providing differential rewards to keep a less powerful working class fragmented by gender and race.” Some basic features of feminism to be explore in the paper are how women are empowered or deprived of power in the texts as well as the challenges of women in the text. This paper would also explore the portrayal of women in the traditional or patriarchal society and the coping strategies. How the empowerment of women are received would also be explored as well as control over their sexual identity. Finally, the paper would also dwell on gender as it affects social stratification as a feature of feminism.
The Idea of Xenophobia
Centre for Human Rights (2009), refers to Xenophobia as the perceived fear, hatred, or dislike of non-native in a specific country. The word ‘xenophobia’ is derived from two Greek words ‘xenos’ which connotes a person that appears different, a guest, stranger or foreigner and ‘phobos’ means experience of horror, fear or aversion. The United Nations Special Rapporteur on Contemporary Forms of Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance defines xenophobia as a ‘rejection of outsiders’ United Nations General Assembly (1994:29). Mogekwu 2005 describes xenophobia as the fear of foreigner or outsiders. It is an embodiment of discriminatory attitude towards non indigene which usually culminates in violence, abuse and exhibition of hatred. Mogekwu adds that the remote cause of this is a feeling of superiority by the natives and poor intercultural information.
Xenophobia in South Africa is not a new phenomenon. During the 1969 as indicated by Biepke, 2008, Ghanaians under the ‘Aliens’ Compliance Order’ chased Nigerian out of their country. This was forty-nine days after Kofi Busia occupied the Prime Ministerial position. The aim was to expel all undocumented aliens. Furthermore, in the 1980s, Nigerians retaliated by chasing hundreds of thousands of Ghanaians out of Nigeria. President Cyril Ramaphosa in his speech on January 8 2018 added that South Africans ‘… must fight the demon of racialism, guard against narrow ethnic nationalism and other backward tendencies such as xenophobia.’ This implies that Xenophobia is still a social menace in South Africa.
Origin of Xenophobia
From the creation of South Africa in 1910, citizens and visitors were strictly restricted in terms of where they lived and where they were permitted to move to. This restriction was said to have created a fragmented South Africa in all ramification, and this fragmentation made South Africans more suspicious of the movement of people across or within the border according to Laudau Polzer and Wa Kabwe-Segatti: 2010.
Furthermore, during the apartheid regime, the blacks in South Africa were treated as outcast in their own country as soon as they were out of their ‘territory’. The law ensured that their stay in the urban areas with social amenities were temporary. This outcome of the apartheid era enhanced xenophobia as noted in Landau 2011’s “Exorcising the demons within” where he adds that South Africans view that the unregulated human mobility was a threat to the insider’s economic and physical wellbeing as well as national development. The Minister of Home Affairs, Mangosuthu Buthelezi, expressed this in 1997: “South Africa is faced with another threat, and that is the SADC ideology of free movement of people, free trade and freedom to choose where you live or work. Free movement of persons spells disaster for our country.” (6)
Bowman, 2009 indicates that in March 1990, Xenophobic assault ‘Hlaphekani’ in which South Africans burnt 300 huts belonging to Mozambican. Additionally, in 1993, when there was report by South Africans in Cape Town that Namibians and Angolans were gaining access to land and services while South Africans remained homeless, there was attack on the Namibians and Angolans which was an indication that they do not belong to the community. Bowman also adds that in 1994, there was outbreak of violence between the Xhosa and the Namibian fishermen. This was based on the allegation by the local that the Namibian were stealing their jobs on the fishing boats as the Namibian worked half the normal rate and they equally refused to engage in collective bargaining with employer over wages and work conditions.
According to This Day Newspaper’s Editorial of 26 February 2017, ‘Xenophobic Attacks in South Africa’ registers that the 2008 xenophobic action led to the death of 62 persons in Johannesburg Townships, many of them were Nigerians. 2017 saw 34 shops belonging to immigrants being looted in Pretoria, South Africa’s capital. Furthermore, Special Adviser to President Muhammadu Buhari on Diaspora Affairs, Hon Abike Dabiri-Erewa, also disclosed that Nigeria has lost 116 lives to xenophobia in 2016 and 2017 alone. It is expedient that this is curtailed as there have being reprisal attacks which could have violent consequences on the continent at large. The 2017 attack on Nigerian in South Africa saw some Nigerian youths who invaded MTN office at Abuja as they threatened to shut down South African’s owned businesses in Nigeria.
Xenophobic Experiences of Women inWelcome to Our Hillbrow
The novel which is written in a communal first person plural voice speaking from a universal omniscient viewpoint to a character that is late. It is a narrative that flows from physical to metaphysical. Mpe’s main character Refentše moves to Johannesburg at age nineteen to attend the University of Witwatersand, which has recently opened its doors to black students. Refentše is unable to afford accommodation on campus so he lives at Hillbrow. The narrative voice directly addresses the primary character throughout the course of this short novel. The voice recounts Refentše’s actions reminding him of his experiences and how they culminate in the fate of other characters in the text. Welcome to Our Hillbrow, follows two main characters: Refentše, who comes to the city to study, and settles in Hillbrow, becoming a sensitive observer of the community; and Refilwe, his childhood friend and previous girlfriend, who arrives in the city shortly before his demise. He falls in love with Lerato, the “Bone of his Heart,” who is also an academic. But his mother and fellow villagers are not happy to see him with a city woman—urban/rural prejudices are acute. When a couple of unfortunate moments of perfidy “shatter” his enthusiasm for life and lead to his suicide, Refilwe infuriates the situation by implying that Lerato is the daughter of a Nigerian man, a curse that plays into a deep-seated xenophobia toward African migrants that still exists in some black South African communities today. Tribal justice, more suicide, and madness follow in the wake of Refentše’s death. Yet the narrator continues to address her in Heaven, where Refentše can observe the action that ensues but is, of course, powerless to intervene.
Female Xenophobic Experiences in the text: Misogyny in the Text
The prejudice for women in the ‘Welcome to Hillbrow’ is evident as the response of the society to Makwerekwere is hostile and inhumane. The protagosnist’s cousin who is a Policeman would, “…arrest Makwerekwere, drive them around Hillbrow for indefinite periods of time. See it for the last time, bastard, they would tell the poor souls. When the poor souls pleaded, the uniformed men would ask if they could make their pleas more visible. They did. Cousin and his colleagues received oceans of rands and cents from these unfortunates. …the womenfolk brought their temporary freedom to roam Hillbrow streets by dispensing under-waist bliss.” (21) The use of the word ‘bastard’ connotes extreme disgust for these women who are involved in prostitution in the quest for survival. While the Police is primarily interested in extorting the women of their gains on the ground that the women are responsible for the spread of HIV/AIDS in South Africa, one would have expected that an aggressive sensitization programme would be given to the people patronizing them, such that there would be no seller once buyers are not available. Additionally, the idea of ‘driving them around Hillbrow for indefinite period of time’ is to ensure that the women are emotionally and psychologically pained. Knowing full well that the women are not proud of their trade, the Police chooses to disconcert the prostitute as such the writer sees them as ‘poor soul’. Yet the Police, deprives them of what they earned from this act of illegality.
Another striking instance of prejudice towards a woman in the text is after the Protagonist – Refentše commits suicide. It is believed in the text that Refentše commits suicide because his mother bewitched him. People believed that,
…you committed suicide because your mother had bewitched you. In an attempt to drive your heart from the Johannesburg woman, Tirangalong had said, your mother had used medicines that were too strong. They destroyed your brain. Twisted its thinking and made you see life as a hideous monster clawing you to death. …Tiragalong’s story was constructed when your mother slipped and fell into your grave on that hot Saturday morning of your burial. As Tiragalong believe, only witches could fall into a corpse grave on burial. …in order to cleanse the village, had necklaced your mother to death. They put large tyres round her neck and pour generous quantity of petrol onto them and unto her body. Then someone gingerly lit a cigarette before throwing the match into her hut, in which she awaited the Second Coming of our Lord. (43)
This contempt for the mother of Refentše is because she is uncomfortable with the wife her son is with as she is an outcast – Makwerekwere. The society – Tirangalong sums up that she must have been responsible for the fact that her son commits suicide. The general ground to assert that one is a witch is since the person slips into the grave irrespective of the person’s health condition or the hot Saturday morning. Immediately she slipped, they confirmed their aspersion that she is responsible for the death of her son. However, we are not told if the same standard is used if it is a male as the contempt is heightened when someone in a careful manner lit a cigarette before throwing the match into the hut. This connotes that the ‘someone’ wants the victim to be psychologically perturbed as the same fire that brings smile and comfort to the ‘someone’ would bring death and torment to Refentše’s mother. Furthermore, one could argue that the metaphor of the ‘Second Coming of our Lord’ connotes that she is indeed not a witch as she makes it to heaven, as such, she is been treated unfairly because she is female.
Portrayal of women in the traditional or patriarchal society
The portrayal of women in the text is one that connotes that they are weak psychologically. One instance is when Tshepo, the protagonist’s friend and model, the first person in Tirangalong to go to study at the University of the Witwatersand is, “stuck by lightning in January 1991, just after receiving his university degree, his mother on hearing the news of the calamity, choked herself to death on her grief, Because as they say, a corpse is always de-skinned on someone else’s back, Tshepo’s neighbor, one of the oldest women in the village, was accused of having sent the lightening to strike him.” (45) This connotes that Tshepo’s mother is psychologically weak to receive the news of the dead son and incapable of consoling herself in the interest of the other members of her family. Another instance where a woman is seen as psychological weak is when a vehicle hit a girl that was ‘…possibly seven year old or so’. While a man response is to apprehend the criminal and get him to justice. The mother of the deceased is only drowned in ‘…choking sob.’
However other female characters in the text characters in the text are portrayed as being emotionally strong. After the marital infidelity between Refentše and Bohlale, it is Bohlale that resolves to confess to her husband and she says, “We must confess and apologise to Sammy about what we did! What kind of friends are we Refentše, who could just lead themselves into temptation like that? What friends betray their loved ones in this manner?” (52) However, Refentše’s response which is not to buttress Bohlale’s points is, “I wish we could simply confess and cleanse our consciences. But it’s not that easy. Remember that Sammy is badly injured. The last thing we want to do is to burden him further with the pain that our story would cause.”(52) Bohlale does not agree and resolved to tell Sammy, however, she meets her fatal end on her way to the hospital and Refentše saves his secret.
Female Characters as Victims in a Patriarchal Society
Mpe’s text also presents female characters as victims in the male dominated society. They are devalued because of their femaleness and are blackmailed. This is evident when Terror, a secret admirer of Lerato, Refentše’s wife tries convince Refentše that, “Sammy and Lerato were too close for any caring lover to be comfortable, you ordered him to leave your flat and not to visit again. He whose respect for his manhood was so shallow, that he left it to swim in the pool of AIDS and spilling into the night streets of our Hillbrow.’” (66) However, after the dead of Refentše, Terror,
…had taken the earliest opportunity to phone Lerato, to scare her with the great revelation that her and Sammy’s murderous behaviour was known to all Tirangalong. And that it was about to be known to the people of Joannesburg as well. Beginning with Lerato’s own mother, whom Terror was volunteering to go and inform personally. That was why Lerato had swallowed numerous lethal tablets. So she had chosen to follow your tracks, rather than yield to Terror’s blackmail that if she let him play his games between her thighs, he would her secret safe from her mother. (66–67)
Lerato is the worst victim of circumstance as the male dominated society view the woman in the act as a promiscuous being, without taking cognizance of the man. The fact that Terror is going to spread the information round Tirangalong and Joannesburg is at Lerato’s expense solely, excluding Sammy, whom they both commit the act. Terror is also interested in informing Leroto’s mother since in Africa context, promiscuity of a female child is shared disgrace for the mother and daughter. Rather than yield to this blackmail. Lorato takes numerous lethal table in order to ensure that there is no escape for her from death, as death is preferred to public disgrace and further act of infidelity which would lead to being infected with AIDS.
Coping Strategies Employed by Female Character
Female characters in the text, that were involved in one act of infidelity either died, commit suicide or is infected with AID. When the protagonist’s previous lover – Refilwe who argues that Refentše’s suicide is as a result of the fact that his wife Lerato has a Nigerian father and as such a Makwerekwere (foreigners that are responsible for all the evils in South Africa) is infected with AIDS during her studies in Oxford she chooses to live with it. She has been infected with HIV for over ten years, while the Nigerian she met had contacted it only few months before meeting her, and he equally chooses to go and waste in his country because he does not want to be anyone’s burden.
Refilwe criticized the hatred for black Africans in Oxford and the fact that not all White Africans are good. She is not screen thoroughly as other Africans at Heathrow International Airport. However, when she gets back to her country infected with AIDS she is treated as a Makwerekwere as anything bad is Makwerekwere. The narrator concludes, “And as Refilwe comes to this part of her journey to AIDS and Tirangalong condemning her and the Bone of her Heart and Refilwe herself reaping the bitter fruit of xenophobic prejudice that she helped to sow.” (113) Refilwe is forced to put humanity before Xenophobia, gender and other societal engendered prejudices.
Conclusion
This paper has taking a critical look into how xenophobia is based on prejudices and as such could be of great consequence if not carefully managed. Discrimination of any form should be discouraged be it gender, ethnic or religious in order to enhance peaceful coexistence. It is evident that women are worst off in instances of discrimination as evident in the text. As such, all should such the focus should be to root out any instance of discrimination. As seen in the text, any instance of perfidy, drug dealing among other social vices are attributed to Makwerekwere as they are responsible for all the ills into society. However, the concept of Makwerekwere is redefined from foreigners to natives that have had anything to do with foreigners. Same applies to female character who become bad once their affiliation to foreigners were traced. This study has portrayed that the female experiences in the text as they are seen as witches, prostitutes, evil geniuses and transmitters of AIDS once they are affiliated to foreigners. This study has equally shown that the effect of these experiences on females is suicide, mental instability, death and alienation.
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