Operation Dudula members gathered in front of Kalafong and then Hillbrow hospitals to try to stop 'illegal foreigners' from receiving healthcare. Photo: File
A new report has exposed the escalation of xenophobia in South Africa since the outbreak of the novel coronavirus in the country.
South Africa reported its first Covid-19 case in March 2020, and as the virus spread – triggering various lockdown levels in following months – migrants found themselves increasingly targeted for attacks and exclusion from critical health care and other essential social services.
This is according to a report launched this week by the South Africa-based, Africa-centred think-tank, The Brenthurst Foundation. The report paints a grim picture of the human development toll of Covid-19 on migrant communities across the country.
Authored as a response to the aftermath of Covid-19 and titled “Migrants at a Crossroads: Xenophobia, COVID and the SA experience,” the report is based on interviews with hundreds of migrants in three provinces that have emerged as xenophobic attack hotspots.
“Covid-19 came amid economic decline, and with the failure of state institutions, locals vented their frustrations on foreigners,” said Emmanuel Owusu-Sekyere, research lead and deputy research director at the foundation.
“The situation was already difficult for migrants before the emergence of Covid-19,” Owusu-Sekyere said.
Xenophobic attacks have been driven by claims that foreigners are taking jobs from locals while migrants are also being blamed for violent crime across the country.
Campaigns under the controversial Operation Dudula have in recent months seen the escalation of anti-foreigner sentiment, which culminated in the murder of 43-year-old Elvis Nyathi.
Despite claims that foreigners are taking jobs from locals, researchers found evidence to the contrary.
“During our research, we also found that South Africans generally do not want jobs that are being done by migrants, such as hairdressing,” Owusu-Skeyere said.
While the actual number of undocumented migrants domiciled in South Africans is not known, the foundation’s researchers estimate there are more than 4 million who cannot be accounted for in official national statistics.
Owusu-Sekyere and Alexandra Willis, a Machel-Mandela Research Fellow at the foundation, have noted elsewhere that the “populist campaigns against foreigners are using the absence of real statistics to place exaggerated numbers and inaccurate reasons in the public domain to justify xenophobic attacks”.
Lack of access to documentation has meant migrants cannot access health care, and the report found high incidents of vaccine hesitancy among migrants for fear of arrest and deportation once they showed up at vaccination centres.
Last year, it was reported that the head of the South African vaccination programme, Nicholas Crisp, said all foreigners could get vaccinated for free – as long as they had some form of identification.
Predictably, thousands of foreigners stayed away from getting the jabs as they did not have proper identification documents.
The report says the closure of home affairs centres unwittingly created more undocumented refugees and asylum seekers, effectively shutting them out of access to essential public health services.
Since the advent of the coronavirus, South Africa’s public health care has struggled to cope, stretching already limited resources.
“Eighty percent of South Africans rely on public health care and undocumented migrants also need the same services,” said Jo Vearey, of Wits University’s African Centre for Migration and Society, who also spoke at the Zoom launch of the report.
“There must be a working relationship between Home Affairs and the Health Department to provide documentation to non-nationals to access public health services,” Vearey said.
This comes as thousands of undocumented migrants say they have been turned away from government hospitals as they cannot afford to pay hospital fees.
While more than 100,000 South Africans have lost their lives to Covid-19, it is not clear how many undocumented migrants have succumbed to the disease.
“Many migrants have never been tested for Covid-19. When they fall sick, they don’t know whether it’s Covid or not,” Owusu-Sekyere said.
According to the foundation’s researchers, amid such health challenges, social tensions that have driven xenophobia are thanks to a toxic mix of impunity among perpetrators on one hand and political rhetoric on the other.
“There has been very little accountability on the attacks of foreigners since 2008,” said lead researcher Owusu-Sekyere.
“Until we see people being held accountable in a court of law, we are likely to see more of these attacks,” he said.
Politicians have increasingly come under scrutiny for their alleged inflammatory comments which have been taken as endorsement by anti-foreigner activists.
“We need more political will. It is the mobilisation of violence that is the problem and we need to recognise the level of mobilisation and move away from the rhetoric that South Africans are frustrated,” said Veary, the Wits University researcher.
Among recommendations, the researchers call for the regularisation of undocumented migrants to enable access to healthcare as a control measure against Covid-19.
Cabinet caused an uproar last year after announcing that the government would not be renewing the temporary permits of Zimbabweans based in South Africa.
While Zimbabweans have since been given until December 2022 to regularise their permits, the foundation says the closure of home affairs centres due to Covid-19 made this impossible, further exposing migrants to xenophobic discrimination.
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