Xenophobia in Jo'burg

Xenophobia is a word that screams loud from hundreds of newspaper billboards in South Africa. Hawkers selling The Sowetan at traffic lights, television commentators and tour guides all use the same X-word as a catch-all to describe the current spate of violence in the country’s townships.

Although aimed at foreigners, the attacks are actually more of a show of Afrophobia or more simply a sign of the residual frustration felt by the millions of black South Africans who still live in poverty 14 years after the end of apartheid.

Economic theory is sure on the benefits of immigration: incoming workers bring with them skills that help grow the economy. As the nation’s wealth grows, it trickles down to every sector of the economy as services industries fill in behind the prime industries. This is an abstract concept, however, when a Zimbabwean worker shows up in Johannesburg willing to work for 30 rand per day, rather than the 300 rand minimum wage the South African government supposedly guarantees.

To be clear South Africans do not rile against all foreigners. Speaking to residents of Alexandra township, centre of the attacks that have so far acclaimed 40 lives and displaced tens of thousands, Nigerians are cast as criminals, Mozambicans as wiley and Zimbabweans as job-stealers. Yet African-Americans are held as role models despite clear moral failings. Boxer and convicted rapist Mike Tyson was recently fêted in Johannesburg and rappers extorting violence fill the airwaves around the townships. Soweto blogger Sokari Ekine says South Africans of colour view themselves as above other Africans, thanks chiefly to first world infrastructure, and enlightened constitution and a highly visible black middle class.

Yet it is this black middle class, whose BMWs and Mercedes clog parking lots in the smarter suburbs of Johannesburg who also highlight the disparity in wealth creation in the New South Africa. The African National Congress government has made great strides in its 14 years of power, bring electricity to the majority of dwellings and building thousands of affordable housing units in the major cities. Yet many still live in ‘informal settlements’ as shanty towns are euphemistically termed these days to distinguish them from townships, many of which feature middle class areas as well.

The only long-term solution to Afrophobia is to end poverty. If the poor had houses, jobs, health-care, they would not be fighting their neighbours for the little scraps they do have.

Norfolking way

A thong blow-out is something to be avoided. But half way down a muddy escarpment with a fifty metre drop below you, it has the potential to make an adventure holiday a whole lot more adventurous. The ravine down which I was heading, along with twelve other plucky souls, runs along a cove on Norfolk Island’s western coast and leads steeply down to the rocky waters edge.

After thirty minutes of harsh bush walking and clambering over rocks surprisingly sharp considering the ferocity with which the South Pacific crashes into the side of this little island, and we reach our kayaks. The adventure had only just begun.

The same could be said about Norfolk Island itself. A self-governing part of Australia, the former independent British colony is now desperate to carve itself a niche as an adventure holiday destination.

But Norfolk Island has a problem: Most Australian associate the island, which lies geographically closer to New Zealand in the Tasman Sea, with retired holidaymakers, sedate pursuits and a distinctly slower pace of life. Meanwhile, with the exception of our cousins across the ditch, few people from the rest of the world even know of its existence. Our Korean kayak instructor Seongbae says he expected to end up in the Whitsundays when he responded to a job advert to work on an “Australian South Pacific island” and says his mail frequently goes via to the UK county of Norfolk. The island’s tourism minister Geoff Gardner, who was once its chief minister, says in the few international organisations in which Norfolk Island is represented independently, many confuse the Norfolk pine tree on its flag with Lebanon’s cedar tree flag.

Until the unlikely event that overseas tourists start flocking to this rocky outpost of Australia, it is domestic tourists the island is chasing and it is throwing some serious weight behind efforts to do so.

The East Germans have proved there is a niche for nostalgia tourism- towns in the former Soviet Bloc part of Germany have shops stocked with old communist-era brands and Trabant tours around Berlin do a roaring trade among those hankering for the comforts of the days under Uncle Joe Stalin’s careful guiding hand.

But despite being steeped in 1950s charm - the island-wide speed limit is 50km/h; the shops close Wednesday afternoons, all weekend and for lunch; and social life revolves around either the bowling or Returned and Services League clubs – nostalgia is not a market Norfolk wants to court. Chiefly because it does not need to: .current visitor numbers show that people over 56 account for over half of all visitors, many of whom come back year after year, staying in favourite rooms in favourite guesthouses. “We don’t take their business for granted,” says Gardner, “but we need to chase other markets”. There is an ambitious target to double tourism over the next five years and younger people are central to this, he adds.

Increasing visitor numbers is the island’s number one priority as occupancy ran at below 50 per cent for much of last year on arrivals of 40,000 visitors.

The priority is partly political: The former federal government threatened to take away the island’s external territory status that gives it autonomy within Australia. It has its own customs and immigration procedures, its own stamps and its own goods and service tax, but uses the Australian dollar and is protected by Australia. Its precise status is disputed by islanders, many of whom maintain the island’s independence, granted by Queen Victoria, was robbed by the Australian government in the late nineteenth century and has been eroded ever since.

Most recently, a plan to merge Norfolk Island into either New South Wales or the Australian Capital Territory galvanised islanders into a plan for self-reliance, to combat Canberra’s claim of subsidies. Having failed in several agricultural endeavours and not having been granted access to either fishing or potential oil revenues from its territorial waters, tourism is one area the island can earn money from, Gardner says. “We need to refute the Commonwealth [Joint Standing Committee on the National Capital and External Territories] report saying we’d go broke due to a failing tourism industry,” he adds.

While the beauty of the island is undeniable; its rugged coastline plunges into the South Pacific, while on land the ubiquitous pine tree punctuates the lush rolling hills at almost monotonous regularity. There are clearly other attractions, too: its unique culture and language, fashioned from Pitcairn Islanders and their Tahitian concubines brings the curious, while low-tax shopping clearly has its appeal. But even given this, Norfolk Island has to compete with other destinations, mostly domestic Australia, for its tourists. There are equally safe places to go with equal if not better attractions in every state and territory. The main problem, the Norfolk government found, was air links.

Syrah and the Packers

The Xenophile's dining companions today, Ros Packer and Lionel Majesté-Larrouy, France's Consul-General in Sydney, debated the merits of rebranding Yarra Valley shiraz as syrah, so as to shake off the association with the cloying blackcurrant cordiale-esque reds outsiders think of as Australian wine.

Fans of cool climate red wines look to the Rhône Valley as a rare example of French wine marketing itself well. Not the best appellations, especially compared with terroirs further up the river such as Côtes de Nuits (including everyone's favorite, Nuits St Georges), Côtes du Rhônes are reliable, soft wines suitable for an everyday quaff. Their principal grape variety is shiraz, but as The Xenophile can testify from a recent short trip to Lyons, the weather in the valley is just a little bit grayer than the vast shiraz fields of New South Wales, Victoria and (improbably) Queensland. The 40-degree days in the Hunter summer are great for merlots, but pack a little too much fruit into a bottle for many palates.

La Packer, herself just back from a jaunt to New York where Oregon wines were a revelation, and Philippe Baute from Azurien hideaway Antibes, in town to promote the Jazz à Juan festival, agreed the way forward was to subtly differentiate the two names for the same grape. Trademarking the better Australian wineregions à la Margaret River and its growers' association's plan for a designated area is alwo a welcome move towards recognition of the importance of climate, soil type and topography in fine winemaking.

St. George and the ghost of Anzac Cove

The end of April marks two sharply contrasting national myths. In Anzac Cove on Turkey's Gallipoli Peninsula, thousands of Australians and New Zealanders gathered to be a part of one of both nations' patriotic ceremonies, the dawn service. Turks now stand aside their first world war foes to mark the loss of 8,000 soldiers' lives from both sides during the aftermath of a amphibious assault.

Two days before Anzac Day (celebrating the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps), another Turkish soldier's legacy was being honoured, albeit mutedly. St. George was a Turk. A Hellenophone Turk, but a Turk nonetheless. He is also the patron saint of England and his saint's day is the closest thing the English have for a national day.

The contrast between Anzac Day and St. George's Day could not be starker. The contrast between Australia nationalism and that of the English could not be starker.

The game of Two-up, played legally in most states on Anzac Day revolves around two sides of a coin. Australian nationalistic tradition also has these two sides, with Australia Day a celebration of the larrikin, Anzac Day a sombre reflection on past military interventions. In the course of nation building, military successes are usually favoured over defeats, but as Australia's independence from the United Kingdom was granted rather than won, remembering the time when the British betrayed their Antipodean allies through poor military planning has become part of the national psyche.

The English, meanwhile, have little attachment to St. George, who is also patron saint of at least a dozen other places. His flag, originally that of the crusaders on their marauding marches through the Levant, may have been reclaimed by soccer fans, supplanting the technically incorrect Union Flag when England was playing, but it has little traction in the country. The UK prime minister Gordon Brown flew it over 10 Downing St this year on April 23 and urged all other government buildings to follow his lead. The press delighted in the irony of a Scot celebrating an English Day that few English can mark on a calendar. The contradiction is sweeter this year, as St. Andrew's Day, Scotland's own patron saint day, will be a public holiday north of the border this year for the first time in November.

March 17 is a pubic holiday in Northern Ireland for St. Patrick's feast day and the Welsh (whose own flag of the Dragon was chosen in part in defiance of the dragon-slaying myth of St. George) have mulled over claiming March 1, St. David's Day as a public holiday, leaving some in England to wonder whether they should join the crowd and have a day off too.

Except the English don't do nationalism and this very much smacks of nationalism. Most local authorities claimed to have neither a spare flag pole or a St. George Cross to fly from one this year, mumbled about looking into it next year but hoped the PM would forget about the whole thing. Gordon brown, meanwhile, stipulated that the flag could only be flown in addition to the federal government's flag, the Union Flag. For good measure, he is still wedded to the idea of a British Day to celebrate all things United Kingdomish.

Meanwhile in Australia, each state or territory's flag flies proudly next to the Southern Cross-emblazoned national flag from almost every public building and a fair number of private ones too. Not yet at US standards of a flag pole in every front yard, the flag is nonetheless a potent symbol in a land creating its own national identity.

Poms here trot out the "we don't do nationalism" line as they sneer at the flags, the wearing of green and gold and the de rigueur labelling of Australia as either "the envy of the world" or "this great land" by politicians of all hues regardless of topic. Yet British nationalism is alive and well in such sneering. By the British labelling such open displays of patriotism as being "un British" they are defining themselves as "us" to the Australian "them". The whiff of superiority that such English (for the Scots, Welsh and Northern Irish exhibit fewer traits) settlers display when mocking Australia's nationalism is in itself a form of xenophobia.