Welcome to our new blog partners, Jenny Allsop of STAR, Oxford and Craig Barnett of City of Sanctuary in Sheffield, and an old friend, Zrinka Bralo of MRCF, who are joining us today! They will be adding their thoughts and experiences to the discussions this Refugee Week, and helping us begin to get at the real picture around the UK - a picture that all our readers can help us fill out, since we are all experts on this fundamental challenge for ourselves and our societies - and we very much hope to hear your comments too.
MigrantVoice kicks off today by asking what sanctuary, refuge or asylum is - a category that, all over the world, has caused more confusion - more heat than light one might say - than practically any other in recent politics.
The On Refuge conversation also launches with its first two articles - a spotlight on the treatment meted out to people fleeing to Britain from the Iraqi conflict - and a piece by legendary activist and leading South African intellectual on what it will take to rescue asylum in her country.
I am mindful from the discussion we had last week on the media and asylum that already the violent events that began in Johannesburg and spread to other South African cities have faded from the headlines. That's a pity. Because it really is the process of and prospects for recovery, and what the South African people, together with an army of social workers and the "good will within civil society, the private sector and religious communities" are able to achieve in helping their society to re-balance its "material, aesthetic and spiritual needs" as Mamphela so unflinchingly puts it - that we need to be hearing about. I hope you agree - this is not a story just about 'elsewhere': we need that rebalancing too. And we need to know what can be done.
There are, to be sure, differences. One of them seems to me to be the capacity of a new democracy that has come through so much struggle to stay in touch with its hopes, and to give realities the names they deserve - so, for example, Mamphela urges her fellow-South Africans to read the signs or "hallmarks of a lack of self-respect" in her society and look to the "deeper social pathology" to be found there. This is not yet a society that is totally wearied by the lies told, ostensibly, but not really, on behalf of its majorities. It still has a window of opportunity - that, I think, is what Mamphela is saying and surely we must all hope - not just for the sake of that remarkable country, but for all our futures - that this is true.
