Johannesburg | Tuesday
XENOPHOBIA is on the rise in South Africa seven years after the end of apartheid, as not only black Africans but also economic migrants take the brunt of a new wave of violence, a survey released this week showed.
The report, based on interviews with more than 100 Africans living in the continent’s richest economy, made depressing reading for South African policymakers keen to uphold the country’s non-racial credentials.
”Xenophobia is a phenomenon that is on the increase…foreigners are the new enemy,” said Bronwyn Harris, the survey’s author at the Centre for the Study of Violence and Reconciliation (CSVR).
The findings come as South Africa prepares to host a UN World Racism Conference on August 31, which has been mired in controversy after a move by Arab states to equate Zionism with racism and African attempts to usher in reparations for slavery.
Attitudes towards Africans, including refugees, were marked by intolerance, prejudice, extortion, harassment, abuse and even violence, the CSVR survey found.
Victims, usually black Africans, were blamed for the country’s social ills.
Many Nigerians in South Africa were viewed by the authorities and public as drug dealers and Zimbabweans were labelled as criminals, Harris said.
Perpetrators crossed the country’s racial lines, with blacks and whites alike fearful that Africans from neighbouring countries may take away scarce jobs and other resources, Harris said.
”While South Africans continue to grapple with the legacy of apartheid, a new form of racism xenophobia also threatens to undermine our fragile human rights culture,” Harris said.
One of the most blatant episodes of xenophobia in the country occurred in 1998 when refugees from Mozambique and Senegal were thrown from a moving train.
Meantime, municipalities across South Africa are to light torches at noon on Tuesday to symbolise South Africa’s opposition to racism ahead of the World Conference Against Racism which opens in Durban this month.
The government has urged South Africans to express their opposition to racism and other forms of intolerance by lighting candles, torches or lanterns and switching on their car headlights at noon on Tuesday. Churches were asked to ring their bells at midday and to host special services. Candles to be lit by municipalities would be left burning until the official closing of the racism conference on September 7. – Reuters, Sapa