foreign nationals protests

A police officer shoots at looters in Turffontein after violence directed at foreign nationals broke out in Johannesburg – Photo: Thulani Mbele, 02/09/2019

Xenophobia rears its ugly head amid a battered and bruised economy

Anti-immigrant groups have staged demonstrations in recent months in Johannesburg, the country’s biggest city, and in the capital Pretoria, demanding the mass deportation of foreigners.

foreign nationals protests

A police officer shoots at looters in Turffontein after violence directed at foreign nationals broke out in Johannesburg – Photo: Thulani Mbele, 02/09/2019

South Africa’s stubbornly high unemployment rate – sitting now at a 17-year high – along with an already reeling economy pummeled further by the coronavirus outbreak has awakened a recurrent social demon: Xenophobia.

Anti-immigrant groups have staged demonstrations in recent months in Johannesburg, the country’s biggest city, and in the capital Pretoria, demanding the mass deportation of foreigners.

Early in November, South African authorities began deporting mostly African 20 refugees and asylum seekers who were part of a months-long sit-in protest against xenophobia, 

The Gauteng provincial government, the country’s economic hub, is seeking to pass a law next year to limit ownership of businesses in townships, also known as low income areas, to South African citizens and foreigners who are fully legalized.

That threatens to upend an industry of convenience stores numbering over 100 000 nationwide with annual revenue of R100 billion, according to GG Alcock, a consultant on township marketing and an author of books on the informal economy, Bloomberg reports.

‘Go home’

“Every foreign national that came to our country since 1994 must be deported,” said Victoria Mamogobo, the 34-year-old chairwoman of the South Africa First party, as she demonstrated on November 27 with a group waving national flags and banners in downtown Johannesburg.

“You’ve got people all the way from Nigeria who are here to sell tomatoes on our streets. How is that helping us grow our economy?”

Since apartheid ended in 1994, Africa’s most developed economy has been attracting migrants from the continent and as far afield as Pakistan and Bangladesh.

Since 2008, there have been sporadic outbreaks of xenophobic violence targeting foreign nationals from the rest of the continent in townships across the country. Migrants are often targeted in the communities where they live, accused of stealing jobs and resources.

A Burundian national said she fled unrest in her home country years earlier for South Africa, a place where she thought she was safe, but was attacked and raped by a man who remains at large.

The most extreme instance in 2008 left 60 people dead and another 50,000 displaced.

Today, social media helps whip up the hatred.

Afrophobia?

Following clashes between locals and immigrants in 2019, President Cyril Ramaphosa was spurred into action, dispatching envoys to other African countries to calm tensions.

Many of the migrants in South Africa are refugees, legally in the country and allowed to work.

SOUTH AFRICA’S ASYLUM SYSTEM IN NUMBERSSource: Scalabrini

  • 18,104 asylum applications made in 2018
  • 88,694 people have refugee status in South Africa
  • Less than 1 in 6 applicants granted refugee status
  • 142,548 backlog of asylum cases home affairs considering in 2017

Some are economic migrants — many undocumented — and others, including hundreds of thousands of Zimbabweans, have been given work permits. While it’s unclear how many migrants are in South Africa, estimates of the number of Zimbabweans alone exceed 2 million.

One person tweeted that its “more to do with Afrophobia than Xenophobia because we all know that we have a lot of foreigners in South Africa, and I mean A LOT, so it baffles me why the hate is only directed towards African Foreigners.”

Vote catcher

With South Africa’s economy set to contract by the most in nine decades this year, a record 31% unemployment rate, and local elections scheduled for 2021, Bloomberg reports that some politicians have found blaming foreigners for everything from joblessness to poor public services is a vote winner.

Finance Minister Tito Mboweni in April said locals should be prioritised in post-pandemic recovery efforts, Bloomberg reported.

Vuyo Mhaga, spokesman for Gauteng Premier David Makhura has denied the province’s township development bill unfairly targets foreigners.

“Which part is xenophobic? Because what that bill is saying is that you must be a South African, you must be in South Africa legally,” “The bias will obviously be for South Africans.”

Foreigners better organized

Xenowatch, which gathers information on xenophobic attacks, says that between January 2019 and November 2020, 1,376 shops were looted and 37 people were killed.

Immigrants, many from Somalia and Ethiopia, dominate the ownership of township convenience stores because they are better equipped than South Africans to compete against formal supermarket chains, according to Alcock.

While South African store owners tend to operate by themselves, Somalians and Ethiopians band together and buy in bulk, allowing them to offer similar prices to supermarket chains, he said.

South Africans still own the properties, and, according to Alcock’s estimates, immigrants pay R20 billion in rent in townships annually.

“The assumption is that if they stop illegal immigrants from trading then immediately those jobs will be taken up, or those small businesses will be taken up by South Africans,” he said. “That’s not true.”

Court challenge

South Africa First and the Put South Africans First movement, founded in April, are demanding interventions from government including a citizenship audit; the introduction of a public-service fee for foreigners; and an end to the issuing of non-essential work permits.

The African Diaspora Forum, which campaigns for migrant rights, made a submission on the bill on November 25 and said it’ll challenge it in court if it is passed.