South Africa: Condemn xenophobia unreservedly

When the dust settles after the 2010 FIFA World Cup, we hear rumours that another more negative and suffocating dust will rise and hit the South African skies in the form of xenophobic violence. When South Africans are done with deploying their positive energies towards ensuring an extremely successful soccer World Cup, the very first in Africa and the most successful ever, they will, rumours abound, be consumed by the fury of the devil and deploy their negative energies towards chasing fellow Africans out of South Africa. As to why this shall happen, and particularly after the World Cup, nobody seems to have an explanation.

Everybody seems to have accepted this line of thinking without asking questions as to the source of these rumours, how they are spread, the modus operandi of those spreading them and the coincidence between the end of the World Cup and the supposed outbreak of this heinous crime. For this is precisely what xenophobia is, a heinous crime we must all, in the name of humanity, condemn unreservedly.

Why are we going to do this? Why are we going to commit this crime against humanity? Why are we supposed to commit it after the World Cup because, logically, we should have done so before or during the tournament.

The hosting of this very first African World Cup has coincided with endless allegations of its imminent failure. If South Africa was not going to fall short on the budget to meet its infrastructure commitments, it was going to fail to meet targets and deadlines. If we were not going to have a crime-infested World Cup, there was going to be a terrorist attack or a calamity of some other sort. One way or the other, the World Cup was going to fail.

Now, what do we have? We are going to rise against fellow Africans who live in our country, chase them out of South Africa, hack those that we will catch up with, burn their houses and shops and commit all sorts of other crimes.

The purpose of these rumours is to snatch away from our hands the victory of successfully hosting the best ever World Cup tournament. It is meant to deny us the right to claim this glory that belongs to us as a people. It is meant to drown the World Cup success in the blood of lies and rumours, if not of criminal violence itself. It is meant to ensure that the successful hosting of the World Cup lies motionless, lifeless and soulless in the coffin designed by vicious rumour-mongers and peddlers of lies.

It is further meant to deny our people their humanity, so that the all-round acclaim they have received from the soccer lovers – citizens of the world who came to our shores to watch the beautiful game – is besmirched with the criminal inhumanity we are alleged to be intending to commit against fellow Africans. We have been praised for being a humane and hospitable people. This we are now to be denied by rumours aimed at tainting us as savage and ferocious animals.

Already we are told that some foreign nationals, informed by such rumours, have packed their belongings and are leaving our country in droves, headed for their countries and many vowing never again to return to this country. This is besides the fact that most of the people leaving the country are seasonal workers who are returning home until there are employment opportunities again.

Suddenly, the pride we felt in being African as we hosted the World Cup soccer tournament dissipates as we face the looming imminence of a savage attack on fellow Africans. The pride we felt when our nation – black and white – united behind both the hosting of the World Cup tournament and Bafana Bafana and the pride we felt when the entire continent stood firm behind Ghana and the collective anguish we felt when the African Black Stars were denied a chance to progress to the semi-finals by the 'hand of the devil' is all about to be undermined by a senseless slaughter of the innocents.

The danger is that such a rumour may eventually turn into a self-fulfilling prophecy. Otherwise, the peddlers of these rumours and lies who are hell-bent on denting our humanity as a people hope that these rumours and lies, repeated again and again, will eventually become true.

Assuming that this was true, one thing is certain: The government is not going to stand idle and watch innocent lives and people's hard-earned property being destroyed by senseless savagery. Regardless of the basis of these rumours, the cabinet decided long before the World Cup to establish an Inter-Ministerial Committee to combat the outbreak of xenophobic violence after the World Cup. This, our government, is both willing and capable to defend and protect life.

Our constitution enjoins the government to protect life and human rights, be it of South African citizens or foreign nationals in South Africa and be they in South Africa as regular or irregular/undocumented migrants. Nowhere does the constitution discriminate in this regard and elevate the lives and human rights of others above the rest, or say that if you are a migrant then your life is less important and you are less human than South Africans. In regard to human rights, the constitution does not discriminate in any way against human beings, regardless of their social station. In terms of human rights, the constitution regards all of us as human, rather than as this tribe, gender group, religious group, nationality or so on. It treats all of us as equals, and we should endeavour to respect, observe and comply with all its injunctions without fail.

The issue of xenophobia has been regularly discussed in South Africa in recent times because of its regular frequency in our public life. Xenophobia, like racism and tribalism, is an irrational attitude towards another based on such irrational attitudes as jealousy, greed and even artificial and exaggerated differences. It is even fuelled by such illogical arguments as 'foreign nationals steal our girlfriends'.

Immigrants take enormous risks to travel to new destinations and to turn unfamiliar environments into a home, whether temporary or permanent. In these new countries, they always face a series of challenges, which include having to either side-step or overcome irrational prejudices among locals about them, insecurities of the locals about the challenge immigrants bring and the lack of knowledge of their rights and anxieties about claiming those rights.

This is more so for poor and working-class immigrants, without the requisite resources to afford life in affluent suburbs. They inhabit the same living habitat as the poor and working peoples of the host country, where fierce struggles over scarce resources take place daily. That is why all xenophobic outbreaks have been in these communities and not in the suburbs, and this is why they have tended to affect African immigrants in particular. That is also why the worst victims of xenophobic violence are mostly women and children, the most vulnerable amongst the immigrant communities.

In this way, the race, class and gender dynamics so prevalent in South African society play themselves out once more in relation to immigrants. Until we are able to resolve these in South Africa, we will not be able to resolve them among immigrants in South Africa. Yet South Africa is proving a favourite destination country for immigrants of all sorts, particularly asylum seekers and refugees, and this trend is not about to change in the near or even medium-term future.

Harnessed properly, migration – both domestic and international – will yield immense positive results for economic development, national security, social and cultural development, as well as the enhancement of the humanity of South Africans.

So much could be learned by South Africans from fellow African immigrants if only we opened our eyes and hearts to receive them and learn from their entrepreneurship. Rather than complain about immigrant entrepreneurs, South Africans could learn from them about how they thrive under the most adverse conditions. Rather than suppress them, we could learn from them how to enhance cooperatives and SMMEs (small, micro and medium-sized enterprise) in our own country.

Sure, it is true that there are policy gaps that feed into xenophobia. However, these policy gaps do not only relate to international migration policy, but to the entire gamut of policy, be it domestic or international, that must begin to accommodate the realities of international migration dynamics and their impact on South Africa.

Secondly, these policy gaps will not in themselves diminish xenophobia so long as we still find it acceptable to allow petty and artificial differences among ourselves, such as race, tribe, nationality or gender, to define our beings and relations with one another, and that such differences may at times make it permissible for us to engage in physical violence for mutual extermination in the fight over what we regard as scarce resources.

First, race, tribal, national and gender differences are petty differences and secondly, they are not enough to justify violence against one another. We should thus not allow whatever policy gaps may exist in our public policy or any reason such as poverty and service-delivery deficiencies to justify the use of violence against any individual, group of individuals or even institution, public or private.

Xenophobia is criminal inhumanity and must be treated as such. It cannot be justified under any circumstances and no rationale whatsoever can and must ever be used to explain or justify it. We cannot use violence to settle our grievances, no matter how genuine these are. The danger with xenophobia is that it can immediately descend into ethnic violence.

We must bear in mind that almost half of the people that lost their lives during the 2008 criminal xenophobic violence were South Africans killed because of their ethnicity. One can shudder to fathom the consequences of retaliatory violence by their relatives or those of the same ethnic groups against those alleged to have been involved in the attacks. Anarchy would be let loose on our nation.

Because of its danger, that it can turn into a furious conflagration so powerful that can consume all of us, political and community leaders should desist from using xenophobia as a political football. We should all collaborate to calm the situation rather than add fuel to an imminent fire.

Secondly, there are many extensive interventions in terms of public policy in various government departments that are already being developed. For example, the Department of Home Affairs is preparing amendments to immigration policy and legislation with the purpose, among others, of addressing the challenges of economic migration.

There is no doubt that the National Planning Commission will have to begin to encapsulate both domestic and international migration in the country's development plans. This way, the country would demonstrate that it is taking full cognisance of the impact of migration on our development plans, and to make forward planning in this regard. Otherwise, migration will always strike the country like an enigma and the country will continue to fail to manage and harness it for development. What is needed is a proactive migration policy and programme.

Some people have raised the argument that the reason for xenophobia is the crime committed by some foreign nationals. However, the advocates of this argument never explain why does crime committed, for instance, by a Zulu or MoSotho never result in the generalisation that all Zulus or BaSotho are criminals and hence violence must be unleashed against all of them in order to exterminate them and, with them, crime? Would killing all Zulus or BaSotho result in the automatic diminishing of crime? Does it matter that crime has been committed by a person of this or that ethnic, gender, religious or racial group? Shouldn't we treat crime as crime, regardless of who committed it, and rather be firm in the apprehension and prosecution of those charged with crime?

South Africa's justice system is based on the principle of 'innocent until proven guilty' and not on collective punishment. That is why if a person has committed a crime, firstly there is a fair hearing and secondly they are not prosecuted and sentenced together with their families and community members, or members of their ethnic groups.

Furthermore, this argument that foreign nationals commit crime neglects the fact that most crime in South Africa is committed by South Africans, and yet nobody is arguing that all South Africans must be killed and chased out. There are South Africans who commit crimes abroad – in Brazil, Peru, Botswana and others. Yet nobody has suggested in those countries that all South Africans should accordingly be killed or chased out of those countries, or barred from travelling abroad. It is merely a coterie of criminal South Africans who have breached national laws and tainted all South Africans.

After all, crime is not made better by the mere fact that it was committed by a South African and worsened by that it was committed by a foreign national. No woman would find it better that she was raped by a South African and find it worse that she was raped by a foreign national. Herein lies the irrationality of this argument that emphasises the nationality or race of a person in the commission of a crime, rather than the fact that crime is unacceptable and must be combated regardless of who committed it.

In an article that appeared in the ANC TODAY last Friday, Comrade Ngoako Ramatlhodi says:

'Those who taught us always counselled that the national question must at all times remain a permanent agenda item of the revolution. This is so, because a proper understanding of relations between groupings, tribes and nationalities will enable a revolutionary movement to make informed choices in changing and at times adjusting such relationships in order to build a united society. In this context, the most important first step is to acknowledge the existence of the different groupings as postulated, and to accept the fact that they relate to one another through a complex set of unequal relationships. It is this unequal set of relationships that must preoccupy the national question so that we can study and monitor the changes manifesting on a continuous basis. Some changes are subtle and difficult to detect whereas others are spectacular and announce their presence in dramatic fashion.'

In this quote, Ramatlhodi hits the nail on the head, and this would apply equally to the new dynamics spawned by international migration on the national question. The notion of the South African nation as we knew it in the past keeps on changing because new dynamics keep on adding to our nation. Our nation is growing, not merely because of reasons of birth, but also because of reasons of immigration.

Today, we have South Africans drawn from other parts of the African continent, who during apartheid would never have been allowed to take South African citizenship.

Countries that have reaped the most benefits of migration are those that have managed it, and managed it successfully in the national interest and in the interest of social, cultural and economic development, including security.

At the same time, the government is prepared to do all it can and has to in order to protect life, human rights and property – indeed, to protect our constitution.

Various civil society forums have sprung up against xenophobia, and these need to be supported. ANC (African National Congress) branches must be active in these forums and provide leadership in them, without usurping the voluntary nature of these forums. Where there are genuine concerns about the behaviour, conduct and activities of some immigrants, ANC branches which have direct access to all ANC leadership at all levels must channel those concerns accordingly in order to stop negative sentiments developing.

At the same time, the government's Inter-Ministerial Committee Against Xenophobia will only become effective if it can harness the participation of various government departments, both across the national government as well as between the three tiers of government. This should ensure that there is coordinated action on the government's part.

Among other things, this should address the challenge of ensuring that employers desist from employing immigrant workers – be they refugees, seasonal workers (economic migrants) or undocumented migrants – outside the Basic Conditions of Employment Act and thus in contravention of the act in order to maximise profit. Trade unions must intervene in this regard and consider unionising immigrant workers so that they could be protected, and in order to protect South African workers and jobs.

The other challenge must be ensuring the regulation of immigrant business owners so that they charge normal prices and pay tax. This should address the current challenge of businesses owned by foreign nationals springing up everywhere, unregulated, charging abnormally low prices and not paying tax, which displaces local traders.

The media has again come into sharp focus in this regard. It is mysterious how they could peddle rumours with such intensity and fury as though they knew for sure these were true. It could be that because the World Cup is ending on Sunday, new stories and focus are now needed to sell the papers, but how appropriate or responsible is it to do this?

All South Africans are obligated to ensure that we combat xenophobia. A people steeped in the fight against racial discrimination as we are should know better that xenophobia is both irrational and, like apartheid, a crime against humanity. We should thus be very intolerant towards it and, in the name of humanity, condemn and combat it unreservedly.

Those who argue that immigrants should live in camps, like South African exiles lived in camps in exile, are totally missing the point. First, there is a clear distinction between immigrants and refugees. Of course, whilst all refugees are immigrants, not all immigrants are refugees. South Africans had not gone to exile as emigrants, but as freedom fighters there to train for military combat. Such military training could not take place in the townships, villages and towns of the countries that hosted our exiles, but in camps which were suitable for such training.

Even the soldiers of those countries, as well as our own country, do not receive their military training in the towns, townships, informal settlements and villages. They receive such training in the bushes and forests of those countries, just as our own soldiers also do.

On the other hand, the refugees in South Africa are not here to receive military training. They are ordinary civilians seeking protection. Confining them to camps in the bushes would be inhumane. The challenge with refugees is not about them, but our incapacity to master the management of this system and process. This is gradually improving and soon things should improve.

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* Malusi Gigaba is an ANC NEC (African National Congress – National Executive Committee) member and South Africa's deputy minister of home affairs.
* Please send comments to [email protected] or comment online at Pambazuka News.