analysis
Khadija Magardie
Last week’s violence at the Zandspruit informal settlement in Gauteng, last month’s looting and burning of Somali-owned shops in Uitenhage and undoubtedly several undocumented attacks directed at foreigners, pose a serious question.
Not whether locals become salivating mobs at the thought of a “kwere-kwere” moving in next door. But whether public education campaigns around migration are working.
Judging by events, one may assume they are not. Like most matters not directly related to crime or the slide of the rand, xenophobia is banished to “NGO-land”; subject to press side-lining, funding crises and other forms of marginalisation. Until foreigners’ homes are burned, nobody cares.
Anyone hoping to see what the government “plans to do” about the issue will be disappointed. The government funds an institution that has made awareness of migration a priority but its officials do not appear to have heard of it.
One of the more successful efforts has been the “Roll back Xenophobia” campaign run by the South African Human Rights Commission a statutory body funded by the government and reporting to Parliament.
The idea that foreign parasites are streaming across the Limpopo to lead us to economic ruin appears to have some support within the Department of Home Affairs, which is charged with dealing with migration.
Refugees and other migrants often complain of the “institutionalised discrimination” they face at home affairs from pen-pushers who are not educated in immigration law.
There was a stony silence last week when Zandspruit was burning from the Department of Home Affairs Director General Billy Masetlha. Two weeks ago he issued marching orders to thousands of Zimbabweans working on farms in the Northern Province. True to form, he said the workers had to leave because they were occupying jobs that could be had by locals, and were draining resources.
All of which may lead one to conclude that it’s not the shack-dwellers who need the education, but the person on television they hear anti-foreigner sentiments from.
An important context to be borne in mind is that anti-foreigner sentiment is by no means unique to South Africa. Europe, for instance, has its fair share.
As the Canadian-based Southern African Migration Project has noted, there are few countries where the majority of the population views immigration positively. Even in countries like Canada and the United States, with long histories of immigration and significant public education programmes, anti-immigration attitudes are still prevalent.
An education campaign should include explanations that migrants, illegal or legal, have rights too. Perhaps it’s also high time funders of anti-xenophobia campaigns and agencies providing assistance to the government on migration issues start holding the government accountable.