Pinky Khoabane : Barley days after playing perfect hosts to the world, the ugly and violent side of South Africa has reared its head, forcing African foreigners living here to flee in fear of their lives.

Let's not muck about here: the notion that these attacks are on foreigners is a big lie. They are attacks by black South Africans on their fellow African brothers and sisters.

These are the same people who, barely two weeks ago, were united behind Ghana in its quest to defeat Uruguay for a historic place in the World Cup semifinal.

These are the same people whose connection to Ghana was so strong just two weeks ago that they hijacked the name Ghana and fused it with Bafana Bafana to come up with BaGhana BaGhana.

There were no Nigerians or Zimbabweans or makwerekwere - that derogatory term we use for African foreigners. We were all Africans.

Those were the good times. We were wallowing in the glow of the World Cup and, let's face it, there was something to be gained - for us - from the association with a winning team.

We needed to show the world how united and African we were, you see, but, more importantly, we needed to impress.

So determined were we to look good and "civilised" in the eyes of those Europeans who had come here with their preconceived ideas about our brutality that even the criminals seemed to have gone on leave.

So determined were we to dispel the image of a country whose visitors required bullet-proof vests to survive (according to the British press) that we set up 56 courts around the country and dispatched 1500 employees to man them on a 24-hour basis.

With the exception of a handful of hooligans who had the audacity to tarnish the beautiful game by stealing cool drinks at hospitality suites or wearing short, orange miniskirts at one of the matches, there was generally peace in the country, and these courts had very little work to do.

Okay, there were the two Zimbabweans who robbed a journalist. They began their 15-year jail sentences two days later. Talk about swift justice!

Never mind the drastic sentence, the idea was to show the world that we meant business.

We were a nation on show. Now, a week later, we seem to be suffering from amnesia.

We have forgotten that we were African - that the Ghanaians, the Zimbabweans and the Nigerians were our brothers and our sisters.

We have suddenly remembered that they are makwerekwere - that group of people that we so abhor and at whose doorsteps we have come to lump all our problems.

If we don't blame them for taking our women, we blame them for taking our jobs. It is because of them that we have drugs, crime, etc.

Here is the problem with South Africans - all of us, black and white.

Apart from the amnesia, we also suffer from a serious bout of misguided entitlement, mixed with an inferiority complex and self-loathing.

We always want, and expect, someone - the government, the employer, the parent - to give something, and it has to be now.

"Give us free houses, free jobs, free electricity, otherwise we will burn the schools or vandalise municipal buildings," the poor will say.

Instead of creating employment and wealth, the middle class and the rich want government tenders, lower taxes, lenient labour laws, otherwise this or the other.

They, too, will stoop to the lowest of levels to get what they want. They will collude and fix prices, they will steal and cheat.

Whites will use blacks to front their activities.

Instead of all of us saying, 'How do we ensure that these rumours of xenophobia remain just that,' we expect someone to do something.

The government, too, expects the black populace to give it the vote. It is the ANC - it is the party that brought us liberation.

When you look at the money spent to ensure the comfort and safety of foreigners visiting these shores during the World Cup - but when the same cannot be done for the citizens, including the African foreigners, who are here to eke out a living - then you know that we are a nation in need of psychological help.

If we could dispense justice within 24 hours - as demonstrated during the World Cup - why is it so difficult to do likewise for the citizens of this country and the African foreigners whose shops were looted this week?

When you hope that President Jacob Zuma would call for the continuation of the spirit of the World Cup as a reminder to South Africans that we are one with our fellow Africans and defuse rumours of possible attacks on them, he prefers to talk of "a party to thank South Africans".