Xenophobic Attacks in South Africa: is there any Justification for Violence against Foreigners (original) (raw)
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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 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.
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.
‘Fortress SA’: Xenophobic violence in South Africa
Anthropology Today, 2008
makes some disturbing recommendations to government on how to prevent a recurrence of the so-called 'xenophobic' violence that wracked the country in May, leaving 60 people dead and many thousands displaced and destitute. Among the recommendations are proposals that government should legalize immigrants and refugees who are already in South Africa, and then close the country's borders effectively (using the National Defence Force if necessary) to ensure that additional foreignersparticularly poor ones-cannot 'come and go as they please'. Current illegals who benefit from the proposed amnesty should be given formal residency and identity documents, but should also be entered onto the country's regulatory and taxation systems.
, the sad event of xenophobic attacks reared its ugly face in South Africa I once again. Xenophobic attacks are a fresh reminder of anti-immigrant sentiments in South Africa perpetuated by mainly South African citizens against immigrants. Since the 2008 xenophobic violence in the country, there has been a push and pull effect of this event on South African Economy. This study tries to access the impact of this attacks in South Africa, as it pertains to its economy, tourism and foreign direct investment as countries have started boycotting the country, it's activities via not attending events, issuing warnings to its citizens not to travel to the country and also recalling back its diplomatic staffs. Examples of these countries are; Nigeria, Rwanda, Malawi etc. This paper also adopts a secondary means of data collection. It concludes that xenophobia is indeed pervasive and that effectively ameliorating this pathology requires a conscious and comprehensive diagnosis of the manifestation of xenophobia at the individual, state and interstate levels because if not tackled with strong policies and orientation, the economy of South Africa is likely heading into a long recession.
Xenophobic Violence in South Africa and the Reactions in Nigeria
Covenant University Journal of Politics and International Affairs (CUJPIA), 2019
In South Africa, the year 1994 marked the end of the apartheid regime and the beginning of constitutional democracy. This political transition which many black South Africans witnessed, raised their hope of a country devoid of racial segregation and all forms of inequality. But not long after the African National Congress (ANC)-led government got to work vis-à-vis the actualisation of the common hope of its people that the rainbow nation became a destination for migrants. Almost three decades after becoming a constitutional democracy, many of the locals in South Africa's townships are still impoverished and unemployed unlike the foreign nationals. Thus, the aggrieved locals have occasionally attacked mostly African immigrants for allegedly taking away the few available jobs, their women, for drug peddling and other criminal activities in their communities. This paper studies the 2019 xenophobic violence against African immigrants in South Africa and the reactions that ensued in the Nigerian State. For this study, the historical approach was adopted and the qualitative method of secondary data collection. Theoretically, the relative deprivation theory, frustration-aggression theory and, scapegoat theory were knotted to explain the rationale behind xenophobic violence in South Africa, the link between disgruntled locals' frustration and aggressive behaviour and lastly, why African immigrants are occasionally victimised. This paper concluded that the Nigerian people and government reactions to the recent wave of xenophobic violence show that they have had enough of the one too many attacks on Nigerians living in South Africa.
Xenophobic Attacks in South Africa: The Case of De Doorns 2009
The Strategic Review for Southern Africa, 2020
1. Introduction On 14 and 17 November 2009 approximately 3 000 foreigners (mostly Zimbabweans) were chased from their homes in the town of De Doorns in the Western Cape, South Africa. Their homes were looted and burned. Up until the further outbreak of xenophobia in April 2015, those xenophobic attacks of 2009 had been the most extensive of their kind since May 2008, when 62 people were reportedly killed and over 100 000 people displaced throughout South Africa (Monson and Arian 2011: 26). In the light of the April 2015 attacks on foreigners in the cities of Durban and Johannesburg, which left at least seven dead, closer scrutiny of the underlying causes and instigators of the De Doorns case provides some understanding of the persistence of xenophobia in South Africa. This article looks into the explanations for the xenophobic events in De Doorns. The research includes reviewing reports of the case as well as key informant interviews. Particular focus has been given to the report of...