Xenophobia is on the rise in South Africa where foreigners are increasingly being blamed for spiralling crime and growing unemployment, thereby damaging the country’s credentials overseas.
Africa’s largest economy started welcoming foreigners of all hues after the demise of apartheid in 1994 but the public mood is turning hostile.
There has even been a shift in the attitude of the government of Africa’s youngest democracy, which is tightening immigration laws, the head of the South African Human Rights Commission said.
”Xenophobia is definitely increasing,” Jody Kollapen told Agence France-Presse.
”In the post 1994-era there was a massive inflow from all parts of Africa. Xenophobia started manifesting itself but excluded those who came from Europe due to the classic apartheid stereotyping, which saw whites as people who bring in skills, money and investment and the others as threats.”
In the late 1990s, some immigrants were killed on a train by South Africans. Of late, hate attacks have tended to target Zimbabweans and Somalis.
South Africa’s new government welcomed nationals from countries such as Mozambique, Angola, Zimbabwe and Zambia as they had backed the now-ruling African National Congress during its long struggle against white minority rule.
But that is changing.
”There is increasingly a feeling that while we appreciate what they had done, we cannot remain eternally obliged,” Kollapen said, adding that the high unemployment rate — officially put at about 25% but estimated at 42% by others — exacerbated the situation.
South Africa’s alarming crime rate — one of the world’s highest — is blamed by many on foreigners.
”The common myth is that Nigerians are into drugs and prostitution, Zimbabweans are responsible for cash heists while Mozambicans stage housebreaks,” he said.
”There is no statistical proof of this. Official records show that only 3% of South Africa’s prison population comprise non-nationals.”
Although there are no official figures, between three million and 6,5-million foreigners live illegally in South Africa, according to various estimates.
Nigerian-born Enyinna Nkem-Abonta, currently a ruling party MP, felt the bite during a heated parliamentary debate when he was in the opposition after a serving minister asked him why he had ”run away” from his own country.
Nkem-Abonta, a French-trained economist, also said he did not get a senior job at a parastatal firm because of his Nigerian roots.
But he does not blame South Africans, as ”suddenly they see millions and millions of people coming in illegally”.
”If the pie was expanding, people wouldn’t care too much. The government has to educate them that immigrants are productive.”
South Africa lacks trained teachers, engineers, doctors and information technology specialists and is seeking to attract skills from overseas.
But the work-permit procedures are messy and often complicated for nationals of certain countries.
We have South African ministers coming and saying they want our professionals [but] they make visa procedures tighter for our people. If this goes on, it will be tit-for-tat,” an Asian diplomat said.
Côte d’Ivoire national Etienne Gaba is enraged at being the butt of threats, intimidation and insults.
”South Africans forget that it is their population of foreign descent that catapulted this country to being the continent’s superpower.”
”Foreigners bring in money and create businesses and jobs. What do we get in return? Being called amakwerekwere,” a pejorative word for foreigner, he said.
Muneer, a Bangladeshi restaurateur in Johannesburg suburb, echoes him.
”I saw a business opportunity where no South African saw one. I set up this place and I employ 34 people, including some locals. And yet they accuse me of kicking them in the stomach,” he said. — AFP
