Xenophobia In South Africa: You Can't Eliminate What You Won't Acknowledge

There’s ongoing tension in South Africa, with violent attacks on foreign nationals reported. A few weeks ago in the Johannesburg neighborhood of Rosettenville, Nigerians were targeted in xenophobic attacks.

On Friday 24 February, a large anti-immigrant protest in the capital Pretoria resulted in the looting of many foreign owned shops, and over 100 people were arrested.

The South African leadership, just like in the past, has been reluctant to call these attacks what they are - xenophobic.

South African Home Affairs Minister Malusi Gigaba told a press conference last week, “Nobody has ever been attacked in South Africa purely because they're from another country?” But recent history tells us a different story.

In the midst of these attacks, to claim that an entire nation is above xenophobia, is not very helpful. There has been talk and some reports of revenge attacks in Nigeria on South African owned businesses as result.

The attacks started way back with heightened violence in 2008, when more than 60 people were killed across the country. Then attacks in Durban in April 2015 left thousands of African nationals displaced.

Africans living in South Africa, just like many migrant communities around the world, are being used as a scapegoat of misguided nationalism in times of economic strife.

There are 13 million foreign nationals who reside in South Africa, and South Africa remains a preferred destination on the continent for refugees and for economic migrants. The country also faces a 26% unemployment rate.

This article by Achille Mbembe is from 2015, but still captures the tough questions around the anti-African sentiments in South Africa.

“The thing with national-chauvinism is that it is in permanent need of scapegoats. It starts with those who are not our kin. But very quickly, it turns fratricidal. It does not stop with "these foreigners'."