South Africa’s Regrettably Foolish Xenophobia

Xenophobia in South Africa is not new; it’s not a phenomenon that started today. In 2008, a wave of xenophobic attacks specifically targeted at black migrants claimed the lives of more than 60 people, many of them Nigerians and Zimbabweans, and their properties and investments worth millions of dollas.

What is their grievance?
They claim that these black migrants from fellow African countries flood their cities and towns and compete with them for scarce and limited job opportunities, most times succeeding at the expense of the locals. Most of these attacks occur in shantytowns and townships where there is a pronounced and asphyxiating poverty.
Like Nigerians, most South Africans live below the poverty line. In fact, figures reveal that the current poverty level in South Africa is higher than it was in the Apartheid era. The economic gap between the whites and the minority affluent blacks on the one hand and the majority poor blacks on the other has never been more pronounced. The poor black South Africans barely mix or come in contact with the whites, and the wealthy blacks are also often beyond reach, locked away in their mansions.
When these black migrants arrive, they do not usually go to the big cities, such as Pretoria, Johannesburg, Durban or Cape Town, instead they settle in the shanty suburbs and underdeveloped townships where they struggle with the locals to eke out a living. This creates an inevitable friction with the locals, leading to resentment and discontent and often culminating in physical violence and abuse.
Though it is true that xenophobic attacks mostly occur in areas such as the ones I described above and are often instigated by their own version of Nigeria’s Area Boys, they have no geographic or socioeconomic limitations or boundaries. If opinion polls – some of which can be accessed with the aid of an Internet search engine – are anything to go by, xenophobic sentiments run high among many South Africans.
In 2014, a disturbing video surfaced in the social media, allegedly portraying officers of the South African Police Service assaulting a naked Nigerian immigrant in Cape Town, sometimes seen punching and kicking him in the groin with unbridled ferocity. Moreover, the alleged killers of the famed South African global reggae icon, Lucky Dube, claimed in court that he was shot because they mistook him for a black foreigner, specifically a Nigerian.
South Africa has an unenviable record when it comes to welcoming foreigners. A report released in 2014 by the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), also known as the UN Refugee Agency, stated that 238 incidents of attacks on foreigners in which 120 foreigners were killed and 7,500 more displaced were recorded in 2013. A similar figure was obtained in 2014 and 2015, it seems, is not looking any different.
Nevertheless, not all South Africans are xenophobic. Most of them aren't, actually. Not all the locals living in the shanties harbor xenophobic sentiments towards their foreign neighbors. But, because we are more attracted to bad news than we are to good news, we are less likely to hear of their good deeds than of their bad deeds.
However, the crux of the matter remains that xenophobia is a disgusting, foolish and cowardly crime worthy of condemnation. Xenophobia is similar to racism and other forms of sociocultural, economic, political and sexual discrimination and it must be treated as such. The present wave of xenophobia sweeping across South Africa should be spoken of in the same breath as the racism and anti-Semitism of Nazi Germany, the discrimination against Aboriginal Australians by the white immigrants in the 19th and 20th centuries, the anti-Christian persecutions by ISIS in the Middle East and the Apartheid.
Some would argue that this is happening on a much smaller scale than the others, but, if left unchecked, it will metamorphose into something more monstrous. Others will argue that it’s simply a symptom of and response to the poverty that pervades the country. This vindication is flawed. There are many ways to react to and tackle poverty, but none of them includes taking it out on foreigners and their investments.
It is rather unfortunate that these series of attacks are happening in a country that had recently been rescued from the fangs of Apartheid. It sours the good works of the likes of Archbishop Desmond Tutu and Nelson Mandela, who strived hard to mend the broken country and turn it into a welcoming, all encompassing rainbow nation.

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