Opinion - News Analysis   

The South African xenophobia

— PHOTO: AFP

Vexing events: South Africa has evidently failed to confront all its evils.

South Africa is a modern, industrialised country, with one of the world’s most progressive constitutions, that prides itself on inclusivity. Its people champion concepts such as the “rainbow nation” and “the world in one country” and, despite resistance, held a much-heralded truth and reconciliation commission.

This makes the events of the last week even more vexing. A least 22 people have been murdered in orchestrated attacks by groups of South Africans against immigrants in poor townships around Johannesburg. Two of these were burned to death. The victims are mainly Zimbabweans. Reports quote the attackers as saying the migrants are “job stealers.” South Africa has evidently failed to confront all its evils. The xenophobia that prompted these attacks permeates its whole society.

The immediate cause for the violence of the last week is the desperation of sections of the poor black South Africans living in subhuman conditions. South Africa remains the most unequal country in the world. Poverty and desperation are only part of the story.

Extensive research by the Southern African Migration Project has shown that South Africa, Botswana and Namibia are among the most xenophobic countries in the world, and that South Africans hold by far the harshest anti-immigrant sentiments. Furthermore, these sentiments cut across all major socio-economic and demographic categories. Young and old, black and white, educated or not. They “display an extraordinary consistency in their antagonism towards foreigners, particularly those from other countries in Africa....” Even refugees are viewed negatively.

South Africa and the neighbouring countries largely shaped by its policies have always been about hating others. Colonialism and apartheid were built on such a consciousness. Pundits and observers of South Africa often generalise about its progressive politics. What they forget is that sections of South Africa’s political class — a small minority — leads its population to adopt progressive laws and attitudes on sexuality, marriage, capital punishment and even immigration.

In contrast, the population is generally conservative and socially rightwing. Openness and tolerance and a historical consciousness did not necessarily go along with opposing apartheid.

Anti-migrant sentiments exist in South Africa despite relatively little direct contact with people from other countries. Less than 10 per cent of survey respondents have had a “great deal” of contact with people from other countries, 35 per cent said they had “some contact”, 11 per cent said they had “hardly any” contact, and a remarkable 43 per cent said they have had “no contact at all” with immigrants.

The sentiments about foreigners come from elsewhere: the public utterances and collusion by political leaders and public officials and, more important, from media images. South African media coverage of foreigners in a wide range of sources is overwhelmingly negative, relying on stereotypes about foreigners as “criminals”, “illegals” and “job stealers”.

Some commentators in South Africa have blamed the current xenophobic violence on the crisis in Zimbabwe (that Zimbabweans fleeing Mugabe’s terror add to job and crime woes), or suggested that the instigators are not South African, as Winnie Mandela did last week. It would be an inadequate response if it were true. And it is not true.

South Africa has to face up to some hard truths this week.

(Sean Jacobs is co-editor of Thabo Mbeki’s World: The Ideology and Politics of the South African President.)

Printer friendly page  
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

Stories in this Section

India’s best friend
Fine-tuning loan waiver
Will it be the UPA’s last supper? statecraft
The South African xenophobia
Thousands seek sanctuary
Cherie Blair and her tell-all memoirs
Free trade has escaped a U.S. onslaught
Rebuilding lives, brick by brick
Corrections and clarifications
Mayawati as CM
Loan waivers
Countering terror
On SSCP
Thank you

Copyright © 2008, The Hindu. Republication or redissemination of the contents of this screen are expressly prohibited without the written consent of The Hindu