XENOPHOBIA

XENOPHOBIA 

noun: xenophobia

1. dislike of or prejudice against people from other countries
2. fear and hatred of strangers or foreigners, or of anything that is strange or foreign

This piece is inspired from being deeply troubled by the mindless gore that has taken place and is taking place in South Africa at this time. It arises from my wondering why a people would come to bite the fingers of the hands that once fed it. It seeks to find clues as to why minds would lift instruments to snuff life out of people who had once championed the demand for an end to the regime that had kept them in darkness. It required a deeper analysis, on my part, of the undercurrent tones. So, I put myself in the shoes of the local South African. Why would I become as incensed, as intolerant and subjective towards people of my own color as to contrive to eliminate them from the face of the earth?

To you saying South Africans have investments in other parts of the continent, and indeed the world, do you bear in mind that 85% of the South African economy is owned by Whites? That the businesses thriving in other parts of the continent and indeed the world are owned by these same Whites? We, the downtrodden, chronically deprived, impecunious, perpetually needy, poorly informed and inadequately skilled Blacks struggle to survive on 15% of the economy. According to the SA Bureau of Statistics, in the third quarter of 2010, 29.80% of blacks were officially unemployed, compared with 22.30% of coloreds, 8.60% of Asians and 5.10% of whites. And these were conservative records. Now, with a third of our population unable to secure meaningful employment it borders on absolute provocation to begin to contend with foreigners for the few positions available. It isn’t an excuse to take another’s life, or to even assume that which belongs to another. It’s a highly flammable socio-economic malaise. And the addition of dirty politics can only ignite it. Perhaps after digesting the following you may begin to grasp the complexity of the situation, and reshape your opinion.

Economy of South Africa

The economy of South Africa is the second largest in Africa, after Nigeria, accounts for 24 percent of Africa's gross domestic product, and is ranked as an upper-middle-income economy by the World Bank – one of only four such countries in Africa (alongside Botswana, Gabon and Mauritius). Since 1996, at the end of over twelve years of international sanctions, South Africa's Gross Domestic Product has almost tripled to $400 billion, and foreign exchange reserves have increased from $3 billion to nearly $50 billion creating a diversified economy with a growing and sizable middle class, within two decades of establishing democracy and ending apartheid. High levels of unemployment, income inequality, growing public debt, political mismanagement, low levels of education, reliable access to electricity, and crime are all serious problems that have negatively impacted the South African economy.

Land Redistribution

The government aimed to transfer 30% of the 82 million hectares presumed to be in the hands of white farmers (amounting to 24.5 million hectares), to black farmers by 2014. Only 6.7 million hectares had been transferred by early 2012 via redistribution and restitution.

This land reform program has been criticized both by farmers' groups and by landless workers, the latter alleging that the pace of change has not been fast enough, and the former alleging racist treatment and expressing concerns that a similar situation to Zimbabwe's land reform policy may develop.

Knowledge

There has been a large degree of human capital flight from South Africa in recent years. South Africa's Bureau of Statistics estimates that between 1 million and 1.6 million people in skilled, professional, and managerial occupations have emigrated since 1994 and that, for every emigrant, 10 unskilled people lose their jobs. There are a range of causes cited for the migration of skilled South Africans. For example, the demand for skilled laborers in the UK, US, Canada, New Zealand, and Australia has led to active recruitment programs by those countries in South Africa. These countries accounted for 75% (by volume) of recent skilled emigration with the UK receiving approximately half of annual skilled South African emigration from 1990 to 1996. It has been suggested that the role of domestic socio-political variables may be negligible. The health sector has been hit particularly hard. In this sector, the loss of returns from investment for all doctors emigrating is $1.41bn for South Africa. The benefit to destination countries is huge: $2.7bn for the United Kingdom alone.

In a case of reverse brain drain a net 359,000 high-skilled South Africans have returned to South Africa from foreign work assignments over a five-year period from 2008 to 2013. This was catalyzed by the global financial crisis of 2007-8 and perceptions of higher quality of life in South Africa relative to the countries from which they first emigrated to. It is estimated that around 37% of those returning are professionals such as lawyers, doctors, engineers and accountants.

Xenophobia in South Africa

Prior to 1994, immigrants from elsewhere faced discrimination and even violence in South Africa. After democratization in 1994, contrary to expectations, the incidence of xenophobia increased. Between 2000 and March 2008, at least 67 people died in what were identified as xenophobic attacks. In May 2008, a series of attacks left 62 people dead; although 21 of those killed were South African citizens. The attacks were apparently motivated by xenophobia. In 2015, another nationwide spike in xenophobic attacks against immigrants in general prompted a number of foreign governments to begin repatriating their citizens.

Violence before May 2008

According to a 1998 Human Rights Watch report, immigrants from Malawi, Zimbabwe and Mozambique living in the Alexandra township were "physically assaulted over a period of several weeks in January 1995, as armed gangs identified suspected undocumented migrants and marched them to the police station in an attempt to 'clean' the township of foreigners. The campaign, known as "Buyelekhaya" (go back home), blamed foreigners for crime, unemployment and sexual attacks.

In September 1998 a Mozambican and two Senegalese were thrown out of a train. The assault was carried out by a group returning from a rally that blamed foreigners for unemployment, crime and spreading AIDS.

In 2000 seven foreigners were killed on the Cape Flats over a five-week period in what police described as xenophobic murders possibly motivated by the fear that outsiders would claim property belonging to locals.

In October 2001 residents of the Zandspruit informal settlement gave Zimbabweans 10 days to leave the area. When the foreigners failed to leave voluntarily they were forcefully evicted and their shacks were burned down and looted. Community members said they were angry that Zimbabweans were employed while locals remained jobless and blamed the foreigners for a number of crimes. No injuries were reported among the Zimbabweans.

In the last week of 2005 and first week of 2006 at least four people, including two Zimbabweans, died in the Olievenhoutbosch settlement after foreigners were blamed for the death of a local man. Shacks belonging to foreigners were set alight and locals demanded that police remove all immigrants from the area.

In August 2006 Somali refugees appealed for protection after 21 Somali traders were killed in July of that year and 26 more in August. The immigrants believed the murders to be motivated by xenophobia, although police rejected the assertion of a concerted campaign to drive Somali traders out of townships in the Western Cape.

Attacks on foreign nationals increased markedly in late 2007 and it is believed that there were at least a dozen attacks between January and May 2008. The most severe incidents occurred on 8 January 2008 when two Somali shop owners were murdered in the Eastern Cape towns of Jeffreys Bay and East London and in March 2008 when seven people were killed including Zimbabweans, Pakistanis and a Somali after their shops and shacks were set alight in Atteridgeville near Pretoria.

May 2008 Riots

On 12 May 2008 a series of riots started in the township of Alexandra (in the north-eastern part of Johannesburg) when locals attacked migrants from Mozambique, Malawi and Zimbabwe, killing two people and injuring 40 others. Some attackers were reported to have been singing Jacob Zuma's campaign song Umshini Wami (Zulu: "Bring Me My Machine Gun").

In the following weeks the violence spread, first to other settlements in the Gauteng Province, then to the coastal cities of Durban and Cape Town.

Attacks were also reported in parts of the Southern Cape, Mpumalanga, the North West and Free State.

Causes

A report by the Human Sciences Research Council identified four broad causes for the violence:

• relative deprivation, specifically intense competition for jobs, commodities and housing;
• group processes, including psychological categorization processes that are nationalistic rather than superordinate
• South African exceptionalism, or a feeling of superiority in relation to other Africans; and
• exclusive citizenship, or a form of nationalism that excludes others.

A subsequent report, "Towards Tolerance, Law and Dignity: Addressing Violence against Foreign Nationals in South Africa" commissioned by the International Organization for Migration found that community leadership was potentially lucrative for unemployed people, and that such leaders organized the attacks. Local leadership could be illegitimate and often violent when emerging from either a political vacuum or fierce competition, the report said, and such leaders enhanced their authority by reinforcing resentment towards foreigners.

Aftermath

In May 2009, one year after the attacks the Consortium for Refugees and Migrants in South Africa (Cormsa) said that foreigners remained under threat of violence and that little had been done to address the causes of the attacks. The organization complained of a lack of accountability for those responsible for public violence, insufficient investigations into the instigators and the lack of a public government inquiry.

Domestic Political Reaction

On 21 May, then-President Thabo Mbeki approved a request from the SA Police Service for deployment of armed forces against the attacks in Gauteng. It is the first time that the South African government has ordered troops out to the streets in order to quell unrest since the end of apartheid in 1994.

Several political parties blamed each other, and sometimes other influences, for the attacks. The Gauteng provincial branch of the ANC has alleged that the violence is politically motivated by a "third hand" that is primarily targeting the ANC for the 2009 general elections. Helen Zille, leader of the official opposition party the Democratic Alliance (DA), pointed to instances of crowds of rioters singing "Umshini wami", a song associated with then-president of the ANC Jacob Zuma, and noted that the rioters also hailed from the rank and file of the ANC Youth League. She alleged that Zuma had promised years before to his supporters to take measures against the immigration of foreign nationals to South Africa and that Zuma's most recent condemnation of the riots and distancing from the anti-immigration platform was not enough of a serious initiative against the participation of fellow party members in the violence. Both Zille and the parliamentary leader of the DA, Sandra Botha, slammed the ANC for shifting the blame concerning the violence to a "third hand", which is often taken in South African post-apartheid political discourse as a reference to pro-apartheid or allegedly pro-apartheid organizations.

Zuma, in turn, condemned both the attacks and the Mbeki government's response to the attacks; Zuma also lamented the usage of his trademark song Umshini wami by the rioters. Zille was also criticized by Finance Minister Trevor Manuel for being quoted in the Cape Argus as saying that foreigners were responsible for a bulk of the drug trade in South Africa.

Attacks in 2009–12

In November 2009, a community of 1500-2500 Zimbabwean farm workers was forcibly evicted from their homes in the informal settlements of De Doorns, a grape-farming town in the Western Cape. No persons were physically assaulted but homes were trashed and looted and this led to the biggest displacement of foreign nationals since May 2008. The Zimbabweans were then housed in a displaced persons' camp where some remained for a year until it was closed. Researchers identified the role of a ward councilor, Mpumelelo Lubisi, in inciting the attack in possible collusion with informal labor brokers who had financial interests in getting rid of their Zimbabwean competitors. South African workers also accused farmers of employing the Zimbabweans at less than minimum wage (farmers and Zimbabwean workers denied this).

In 2010 the press carried numerous articles claiming that there would be massive planned xenophobic violence at the end of the 2010 Football World Cup. However this did not happen.

In July 2012 there were new attacks in parts of Cape Town and in Botshabelo in the Free State.

Attacks in 2013–17

On 30 May 2013, 25-year-old Abdi Nasir Mahmoud Good, was stoned to death. The violence was captured on a mobile phone and shared on the Internet.

Three Somali shopkeepers had been killed in June 2013 and the Somali government requested the South African authorities to do more to protect their nationals. Among those murdered were two brothers who were allegedly hacked to death. The attacks led to public outcry and worldwide protests by the Somali diaspora, in Cape Town, London and Minneapolis.

South African Foreign Minister Maite Nkoana-Mashabane expressed the government's "strongest condemnation" of the violence which has recently seen looting and the death of a Somali shopkeeper. Somali Prime Minister Abdi Farah Shirdon has expressed concern for the safety of Somalis in South Africa, calling on the government there to intervene to stop violence against Somali people after deadly attacks in Pretoria and Port Elizabeth.

On 7 June 2014, a Somali national, in his 50s, was reportedly stoned to death and two others were seriously injured when the angry mob of locals attacked their shop in extension 6 late on Saturday. Three more Somalis were wounded from gunshots and shops were looted.

In April 2015, there was an upsurge in xenophobic attacks throughout the country. The attacks started in Durban and spread to Johannesburg. Zulu King Goodwill Zwelithini has been accused of fueling the attacks by saying that foreigners should "go back to their countries".

Locals looted foreigners' shops and attacked immigrants in general, forcing hundreds to relocate to police stations across the country. The Malawian authorities subsequently began repatriating their nationals, and a number of other foreign governments also announced that they would evacuate their citizens. More than 300 people were arrested. On 18 April 2015 a photographer from the Sunday Times, James Oatway, photographed a brutal attack on a Mozambican man. The man, Emmanuel Sithole, died from his wounds. The publication of photographs in the April 19 edition of The Sunday Times of the murder of Mozambican street vendor Emmanuel Sithole in Alexandra Township the previous day led to four suspects being arrested within a matter of days. Sithole's name is not included in the official list of seven victims killed in the April 2015 attacks, including an Ethiopian, a Mozambican, a Bangladeshi, a Zimbabwean and three South Africans who were all killed in KwaZulu-Natal.

Despite the government's insistence that Sithole's murder was not xenophobic, the South African National Defense Force (SANDF) was deployed in Alexandra Township following the publication of the images. On 23 April several thousand demonstrators marched through central Johannesburg to protest against a spate of deadly attacks on immigrants. They sang songs denouncing xenophobia and carried banners that read "We are all Africans" as migrant workers crowded balconies, shouting their support.

October 2015 Attacks

In October 2015 there were sustained xenophobic attacks in Grahamstown in the Eastern Cape. It was reported that more than 500 people were displaced and more than 300 shops and homes looted and, in some cases, destroyed altogether. In these attacks Muslims were specifically targeted.

2016 Tshwane Riots

From 20–23 June 2016 a wave of riots hit the City of Tshwane. Although the riots were sparked by political discontent within the ANC Somali, Pakistani and other foreign owned shops and micro enterprises were targeted for looting and a number of foreigners were attacked.

2017 Anti-immigration Protest

On Friday the 24 February 2017 a large scale and officially sanctioned anti-immigrant protest was organized and held in the City of Tshwane. Protesters marched to the Foreign Ministry and handed a petition to government representatives. Protesters accused immigrants of taking jobs from South Africans, causing crime, and complained that "they are arrogant and they don’t know how to talk to people, especially Nigerians." 136 protesters were arrested during the march.

Reactions

South African Small Business Development Minister Lindiwe Zulu said that foreign business owners cannot expect to co-exist peacefully with local business owners unless they share their trade secrets. According to Zulu, foreign business owners had an advantage over South African business owners due to marginalization under apartheid. "They cannot barricade themselves in and not share their practices with local business owners," Zulu said. The comments were met with widespread criticism.

An inquiry by the Competition Commission – the country’s anti-trust regulator, has indicated that a difference in performance between foreign and local business owners has created a perception that foreigners are more successful than locals. While there is nothing wrong with examining the dynamics of competition, the insinuation that foreign business owners were to blame for the decline of South African-owned small business was worrying.

Vanya Gastrow, a researcher from the African Centre for Migration in Johannesburg, published a case study on the economics of small traders in South Africa. The study titled “Somalinomics”, outlined the trade practices of Somali traders in South Africa. According to Gastrow, most small foreign retailers set a low mark-up to make a high turnover, they locate their businesses in highly trafficked pedestrian areas, and they open early and close late and have a wider product range.

My Conclusion

There are no quick fixes here. After all, self-interest trumps all, doesn’t it? The warning on plane flights comes readily to mind; in case of emergency place the oxygen mask first and foremost on your face before attempting to assist others. Others includes your spouse, your child or your elderly parent. Safeguard yourself first. Only then should you consider the safety of anyone else. In this situation, the resources are limited, the capabilities are skewed. Perhaps, crafting policies that would enable locals to intern under better experienced, more enlightened immigrants, thereby acquiring badly needed skills would help.

 https://www.standardmedia.co.ke/article/2001231050/south-africa-should-stop-xenophobia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_South_Africa

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xenophobia_in_South_Africa