‘Xenophobia’: Violence against Foreign Nationals and other ‘Outsiders’ in Contemporary South Africa (original) (raw)
Related papers
Attacks on foreigners in South Africa: more than just xenophobia?
Strategic Review, 2008
On 11 May 2008, violent attacks against non-citizens began in Alexandra before spreading rapidly across Gauteng and then elsewhere in the country. This article explains what helped translate long-term concerns over people's physical and economic insecurity into a murderous anti-foreigner campaign. It argues that the attacks are in part the result of an extended series of actions that has generated a segment of the population that is institutionally and socially excluded from legal protection. Rather than protection, almost every engagement with purported agents of law places non-nationals further outside of it. Following a pattern seen elsewhere in the world, South Africa has de facto suspended elements of its normal legal order vis-a-vis refugees, asylum seekers, and undocumented migrants through both commission and omission. Under these circumstances, the right to space and life cease to be delimited by constitutional principles. Rather, people are stripped to 'bare life', alienated from their hitherto inalienable human rights. In this condition, they are not only subject to the states' unbridled and potentially arbitrary power but, by being stripped of their identity as legal beings, their lives and livelihoods also exist at their neighbours' whim.
The May 2008 Xenophobic Violence in South Africa: Antecedents and Aftermath
2013
This article revisits the May 2008 xenophobic attacks in South Africa in order to grapple with key questions around the causes of xenophobia in South Africa, measures that can be taken to address xenophobia and ways in which diverse but inclusive communities can be built. A particular focus of the article is how state institutions reinforce anti-foreigner sentiments especially against those at the lower end of the socio-economic ladder. In a context where poor South Africans are struggling to find work and find promises of service delivery empty, it is African foreigners with whom they live side by side who become the targets for anger and frustration. The challenge for those wanting to confront xenophobia is how to build coalitions that transcend foreigner/local boundaries. This is made difficult because foreigners tend to coalesce into tighter groups as forms of protection which only exacerbates their outsider status. The prognosis in the short term for movements confronting xenophobia is the struggle to change attitudes, build defence units against violence, while agitating for better living conditions and decent housing. This is a difficult terrain to organise in because there is the perennial danger that the struggle for a better life can translate into attacks on foreigners.
Xenophobic Attacks in South Africa: is there any Justification for Violence against Foreigners
The world is characterized by migratory patterns. Migration from one country to the other is often caused by various factors ranging from search for better life, fear for scathing wars, hunger, etc. Migration has been practiced for ages throughout the whole world. However, it has been marred by resistance from native citizens of countries often resulting into xenophobic attacks. The great question to be asked is whether xenophobic attacks are justified or not. The question may be further expanded in determining whether governments do have frameworks or policies to ensure safety of migrants. South Africa has also had a share of xenophobic attacks that have claimed lives and damage to property belonging to migrants. A series of attacks has been experienced throughout the country and this has been seen to be directed to specific nationalities. The scale of attacks against migrants, especially black migrants has raised some eyebrows at times threatening the investor confidence in the country. This paper discusses the possible causes of xenophobic attacks in South Africa. The discussions will determine whether xenophobic attacks are justified or not. summarily, it may be forthright said there is no justification for killing anyone whether it be a foreigner or anyone in the country as enshrined in the South African Constitution. However, there should be scrutiny of some sort to establish the sources and rationale behind xenophobic attacks to determine possible solutions to these barbaric acts.
The Roots of Xenophobic Violence in South Africa—A Pan African Response
Academia Letters, 2021
In South Africa, the Covid-19 pandemic has served to reify the manifold inequalities emanating from the country's histories of colonial domination, Black genocide, and anti-black racism. But South Africa's current social crisis is further exacerbated by internal perceptions that it has been inundated and infested with illegal immigrants who have eroded the country's social fiber. It is a perspective that oftentimes leads to physical violence. Trucks driven by foreign nationals have been burned and there have been arrests and extrajudicial killings of 'illegal' workers, gardeners, and small shopkeepers from countries including Zimbabwe,
Xenophobic Violence in South Africa: An Analysis of Trends, Causal Factors and Responses
Xenowatch , 2021
Xenophobic violence generally refers to any acts of violence targeted at foreign nationals or 'outsiders' due to being foreign or strangers. It is an explicit targeting of foreign nationals or outsiders for violent attacks, despite other material, political, cultural or social forces that might be at play (Dodson, 2010). It is a hate crime, whose logic goes beyond the often accompanying and misleading criminal opportunism. The real motive for the violence, as unambiguously expressed by the perpetrators themselves, is to drive foreign populations out of local communities (Misago, 2017). This type of violence has become a longstanding feature of post-apartheid South Africa (Landau, 2011), where violent incidents have been recorded since 1994. The violence notoriously peaked in 2008, when at least 150 incidents were reported throughout the country. Since 2008, there have been an average of 59 incidents of xenophobic violence recorded per year. This violence increasingly threatens the lives and livelihoods of those deemed outsiders. Target groups and individuals are regularly killed, assaulted, injured and displaced, and their property and livelihoods assets are looted, destroyed, or appropriated. However, as this report indicates, the consequences of this violence extend far beyond the targeted groups. It has negative socioeconomic, political and security implications for all the country's residents. This report draws on a more than a decade-long quantitative and qualitative research exploring xenophobic violence in South Africa. Beginning in the mid-2000s, and currently conducted under the Xenowatch Project, the research is a systematic investigation into the nature, causal factors, and implications of xenophobic violence in South Africa. It also explores the nature and effectiveness of state and civil society responses and interventions aimed at addressing the violence or at least mitigating its effects. This report presents the main findings of this research. 9 (2) These are the three cities identified to be most affected by xenophobic violence in South Africa. These partners play an integral role in assisting Xenowatch to deliver accurate and reliable data and analysis, advocate for more effective interventions to address the violence. Further to this, it recognises the importance of building inclusive communities, partnering with local government authorities (particularly the major cities of Johannesburg, Cape Town, and Durban) and other stakeholders (including the Democracy Development Program (DDP), and South Africa Cities Network (SACN)) to establish 'local communities of practice' that have started working to promote inclusive governance, social cohesion, and address xenophobic discrimination. Over the past five years, Xenowatch has developed into a unique and reliable source of information, data and analysis on xenophobia and related violence in South Africa. It continues to provide evidence-based (empirically and theoretically informed) understanding and recommendations for addressing the violence more effectively. Our research and analysis are regularly used by various actors, such as international organisations, civil society, researchers, journalists, and activists, both locally and internationally. Xenowatch outputs thus far include books, book chapters, journal articles, research reports, policy briefs, factsheets, newsletters, media articles and interviews, presentations, keynote addresses, radio adverts, etc.
Xenophobia, State and Society in South Africa, 2008–2010
Politikon, 2011
Based on primary research that was in field immediately before and after the May 2008 xenophobic violence, this article explores the social base that fed and continues to feed xenophobia in South Africa. It examines the different ways that the violence has been labelled-criminal, xenophobic, negrophobic, Afrophobic-and explores possible motivations for using these different labels. It also examines the role that civil society organizations played during and after the violence, and concludes that without a far more deepseated economic and social transformation, South Africa will remain beset by unresolved challenges that have their roots in our past but remain with us today. '.. .[E]very foreigner who is employed has robbed a South African of that job and every foreigner who does not work commits crime.'(Focus group participant, Johannesburg, 2008) 'These masses are neither antipathetic towards, nor do they hate foreigners. And this I must also say-none in our society has any right to encourage or incite xenophobia by trying to explain naked criminal activity by cloaking it in the garb of xenophobia.'(Former President Thabo Mbeki, 2008)
Xenophobia in South Africa: Violence against Nigerian Immigrants
INSAMER Analysis, 2019
Xenophobic violence in the country is abysmal and must be condemned in the strongest terms possible. This renunciation of violence is after all what distinguishes a civilized society from a barbaric one as Jaeger succinctly says, “when a society educates its members to the extent that all groups within it willingly make this renunciation (of violence)...then we can speak of civilization and no longer merely society”.
An Analysis of the Causes, Effects and Ramifications of Xenophobia in South Africa
Insight on Africa, Vol. 3, No 2, 2011
The concept xenophobia is not a new phenomenon and has become a major, worldwide problem especially in this contemporary era. Worth noting is the 2008 and the 2009 xenophobic attacks that were perpetrated in various parts of South Africa. The analysis of the root causes and exacerbating factors of xenophobia have been linked to socio-economic and political aspects emanating from within South African society. Notable in South African history is the apartheid regime and the present democratic age. With the end of the apartheid regime and the transition to democracy, the new South Africa continues to be challenged politically, socio-economically and security-wise, especially following the recent xenophobic attacks on foreign citizens. Migrants, in particular black foreigners, make up the majority of the victims and are often described as the ‘scapegoats’ of the expressed economic and social dissatisfactions and frustrations of a few South African nationals. With the South African government striving towards establishing a culture of respect for human rights in its citizens, the question that arises is -- what are the causes and consequences of such xenophobic attacks that flagrantly violate the very proclamation of the principles of human rights? This article examines and encapsulates the socio-economic and political causes, effects and ramifications pertaining to xenophobia in South Africa, with a special focus on aspects such as poverty, the high unemployment rate among black South Africans, a lack of, or inadequate service delivery and corruption in terms of access to resources. Therefore, the paper argues that xenophobia is not only an inhumane problem faced by foreigners, but also by locals in South Africa. It further interrogates the efforts being made by the South African government and the Department of Home Affairs in an attempt to curb this violent practice.
As elsewhere in the world South Africa has also experienced increasing flows of migrants into the country during the 1990s – some undocumented, others ‘overstayers’ as well as refugees from other parts of Africa. These increasing numbers of all kinds of migrants has gone hand in hand with more public expressions of xenophobia and violence towards all foreigners who are often blamed for a myriad of social and economic ills and problems. Up to the passing of the Refugee Act in November 1998 no distinction was made between the different types of migrants in the Aliens Control Act. In particular this Act had few legal protections for so-called ‘illegal aliens’ (undocumented foreign migrants) with suspected undocumented migrants being repatriated (removed/deported) back to their countries of origin without much benefit of a court hearing or recourse to legal representation. An arresting officer was in practice both judge and jury making the administrative decision to repatriate an undocumented migrant on his/her own without any court processes being followed. However, in the post-1994 democratic South Africa with a new Constitution and Bill of Rights the growth of a stronger human rights culture has focused attention on a number of legal and legislative lacunae in the treatment of migrants.