Nabadda survived hate crimes in South Africa

Cosmetics, she adds, are usually expensive. It did not help that her arrival in South Africa came against a backdrop of an outbreak of xenophobic violence. Some politicians had for several years been stocking the fires with anti-migrant vitriol. Anti-migrant talk was increasingly finding itself at the centre of campaign strategies as the country went to the polls that year.

This was hardly a novel development. Back in 2008, the country descended into xenophobic violence that targeted mostly low-income black migrants, refugees and, in a few instances, South African nationals who were deemed to be “too black to be South African.” The cocktail of violence left 60 people dead, displacing 100,000 others.

A year after her arrival in South Africa, Goodwill Zwelithini—the king of the Zulu at the time—sparked off another wave of xenophobic violence when he called on foreigners to leave the rainbow nation. He further accused them of enjoying facilities that “should have been for local people.”

The violence, in which foreign-owned shops in Durban and other cities were looted, got so bad that a number of foreign nationals closed their businesses and asked to be repatriated.

Whereas the fires were soon extinguished, it would appear that anti-migrant sentiments were still running high by March 2020 when the South African government announced a lockdown. This was one of the country’s measures aimed at containing the spread of Covid-19. It did not take long for foreigners—who had previously been accused of fuelling crime—to be held responsible for the outbreak of the novel virus.

“Nationalism”

During the lockdown, an aggressive anti-immigrant cyber campaign was launched with hashtags like “Put South Africa First”, “All foreigners must leave”, “We want our country back” and “Clean up SA.”

The cyber campaign, however, found expression on the ground soon after the lockdown was lifted. A faction of the “Put South Africans First Movement” soon launched a campaign that saw the youth march to the embassies of Zimbabwe and Mozambique.

That later translated into Operation Dudula, which the promoters claimed was driven by the need to ease the burden that the “influx of illegal immigrants” was placing on public health services,  job opportunities and social grants.

Dudula is Zulu for “force out” or “knock down.”

Sporadic violence broke out in Johannesburg, Durban, and Pretoria. Foreign owned businesses were looted or torched in violence that saw more than 12 people lose their lives. Ms Nabadda—one of the targets—did not lose her life, but she could well have.

“Rent is quite high in South Africa. It would not be possible for me to pay for a place to reside in and another in which to run the business. I, therefore, used to stay in the same place. The front was the shop and the rear was my boarding place,” Ms Nabadda told Saturday Monitor.

A close shave

She was lucky to have escaped with her life.

“That day, we had not worked. I had also stayed away for the night. When they announced that they would be staging marches aimed at cleaning up South Africa, they released a programme detailing which places would be attacked on which days,” she recalls, adding, “Sometimes the attacks would be during the day and in other cases it would be during the night. They attacked ours at night, but I had opted not to spend the night there.”

The following morning, she returned to find the business premises in ruins.

“What they could not take they would destroy. The business was destroyed completely. I had my back against the wall,” Ms Nabadda recalls, adding that, while staying was an option, she was not ready to start all over again.

The Uganda community in South Africa has over time developed a spirit of cooperation that sees them come to the aid of one of their own in times of adversity.

“When a Uganda dies, they contribute money to help repatriate the body. The same thing happens when you tell them that things have gone south and you would like to return home. They raised me an air ticket and I returned to Uganda soon after Uganda had lifted the ban on flights to Entebbe,” she discloses.

Bouncing back

A year before Ms Nabadda opted to return to her native country, the government of Uganda had launched the Emyooga initiative to much fanfare. Within a year of the launch of the programme, it was discovered that many who had either sought economic refuge outside Uganda were being deported or returning home with dashed hopes and dreams.

Mr Peter Mujuni, the executive director of the Micro Finance Support Centre (MFSC), said it was deemed necessary to not only identify but also interest the returnees into participating in programmes.

Ms Nabadda was part of the first group of 12 returnees who were assisted to form a Savings and Credit Cooperative (Sacco), trained in, among others, financial management, and provided with start-up capital.

Whereas Ms Nabadda has found her feet since returning to Uganda, challenges abound. She told Saturday Monitor that the rent has been high, the cost of living is high, and the capital is still too small to enable her to get the kind of turnover she would like. While she would appreciate some recapitalisation, she is not oblivious to the inroads made six months since the intervention. She can indeed confirm that the light at the end of the very dark tunnel is not a train.

“I see a bit of a difference. My business is growing. Given where I was and where I am, I can see that I am going places,” she beamed.