But our week of tears had been particularly bitter in that the poor, dispossessed and exploited, who suffered, did so at the hands of their fellows. And the government cannot escape its share of responsibility, despite the frankly silly protestations of the Pahad brothers, deputy foreign minister Aziz and minister in the presidency, Essop, with their imputations about the media, third force and right wing responsibility.

Poverty, bureaucratic inefficiencies, arrogance and corruption all played a part in creating the conditions in which frustration and hopelessness could turn to blind rage. And the social and economic environment of a country is largely created by the government, encouraged always by those who profit most from the status quo.

So it was that our government, in alliance with business and most opposition parties, promoted the virus of nationalism which, in the right conditions, could mutate into rabid xenophobia.

In July, seven years ago, when the Proudly South African campaign was launched, this column noted: “Proudly South African or proudly xenophobic. That is the question facing the more class-conscious elements of the trade union movement.” The column added that this use of nationalism contained “the whiff of a Shakespearean tragedy”, where “forces beyond the the control of the well-meaning players conspire to guarantee grief”.

The union federations did at least express some “ideological and practical” reservations. Their initial demand had been that South Africa should not import goods from countries that did not adhere to labour standards at least on a par with those in South Africa. This was the practical application of an injury to one being an injury to all, of internationalism.

Still, they capitulated although Gwede Mantashe, then general secretary of the National Union of Mineworkers, warned that “xenophobia is a risk in a campaign like this”. But Cunningham Ngcukana, then president of the National Council of Trade Unions, noted that it was “better to be inside than out”.

This stress on “South Africaness” was further exacerbated by the tendency of the government and home affairs officials to refer to migrants by the dehumanising term, “aliens”.

A section of the media played its part, echoing such terms and the perceptions they convey. From such seeds of nationalism the virulent poison of xenophobia seeped quickly into a culture already steeped in sexism and violence.

But most unions, although to the forefront in protests against the recent barbarism, have failed to address the fundamental issue of nationalism: they have failed to acknowledge that it was lines drawn on maps by imperialists in Europe that made aliens, foreigners and makwere-kwere of fellow Africans.

The union federations also continue to accept the “imagined communities” of nations in blatant contradiction to their professed adherence to the slogan: workers of all countries, unite.

This seems particularly sad on the eve of Africa Day and on the 137^th anniversary of the first “week of tears”, the crushing of the Paris commune of 1871, when workers and the poor, seized control, for just two months, of their destiny.