Joburg’s migrant informal traders have faced a great deal of harassment of late.
In June, a fire gutted Yeoville’s “African market”, where many traders from elsewhere on the continent sold food. Some took great financial risk to set up shop there, one immigrant told radio station 702, but it was the place to go if you wanted a taste from home.
The fire broke out after threats by xenophobic group Operation Dudula, though it has denied responsibility for the blaze.
Then, last month, the authorities evicted a number of foreign traders in the Joburg CBD. Again, Dudula was alleged to have been involved, working alongside the police.
When the Gauteng high court ruled that the traders could return to their stalls, the City of Joburg consented. Well, most of the council did. ActionSA’s Nkululeko Mbundu, MMC for economic development, became threatening. He retweeted a statement containing the contact details of lawyers for the Socio-Economic Rights Institute of SA (Seri), which had represented the informal traders, claiming they were being used as a “front” to keep the traders in business.
The Twitter army did the rest, and Seri was forced to close its offices temporarily to safeguard its staff.
Joburg prides itself on being one of the major economic hubs of Africa, which makes Mbundu’s action particularly short-sighted. But it’s hardly out of keeping with a new wave of anti-immigrant vigilantism that has been recurring with increasing frequency since last year. And the implications are potentially devastating.
“Migrants can’t contribute to the economic development of a country when the host society is not welcoming,” Jean Pierre Misago, senior researcher at Wits University’s African Centre for Migration & Society, said at a seminar on the subject last week.
While years of research show that migrants are able to make money despite the challenges they face, “they cannot invest back in the communities because they’re not sure about their future”, Misago added. “They’re not sure about their tomorrow, so there is what is seen as a constant resource outflow [from them].”
That said, many migrants add value in other ways. Street traders, for example, serve their communities by selling affordable products such as food at a time of increasing food insecurity.
A failure of governance, particularly at the local level, has stymied attempts to address xenophobic violence
— What it means:
Sporadic outbreaks of xenophobic violence began in SA in 1994 already, after the country’s democratic transition and its normalisation of relations with the rest of Africa. But it increased significantly in 2008, when at least 150 violent incidents were reported across the country.
According to “Xenophobic Violence in SA”, a report published in December by Xenowatch and which Misago co-authored, the violence directed at African foreigners — including killing, assault, displacement and the looting or destruction of property and livelihood assets — “increasingly threatens the lives and livelihoods of those deemed outsiders”.
The report says: “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 is because vigilante groups decide ad hoc who has rights and who doesn’t, including who may live and who may die — a violation of the rule of law that “puts everyone at risk”, Xenowatch says.
It can have international repercussions for SA, too.
“Investors don’t like to invest in countries that are hostile, at war with each other and corrupt,” ANC veteran and former government official Mavuso Msimang told the seminar at Wits last week.
Xenophobic violence also has negative consequences for business — abroad and in SA. Nigeria, for example, has previously reacted strongly to the mistreatment of its nationals in SA, and threatened to expel MTN and DStv. On the home front, violence could make business impossible, leading local investors to look for opportunities elsewhere.
Consider the sporadic attacks on truck drivers on the crucial N3 transportation route from Durban. That could drive businesses that use the port to explore other options for the transportation of their goods, says Siphelele Ngobese, researcher at the Inclusive Cities Programme at the SA Cities Network. “If the port operator were to leave KwaZulu-Natal [KZN], it would have implications not only for SA but for the region as well,” she says.
If things continue on the current track, xenophobic violence could push SA closer to state failure.
Theo Neethling, professor of politics at the University of the Free State, has been tracking 14 variables related to state failure for more than a decade now. He says one of the flash points is social risk — including violent protests and xenophobic attacks. “This is one of the things that has changed significantly since 2005,” he tells the FM. “It could erupt really badly.”
The consequences of this [xenophobic] violence extend far beyond the targeted groups. It has negative socioeconomic, political and security implications for all the country’s residents
— Xenowatch
Part of the problem is that law enforcement has been bad or nonexistent, which indicates a weakening of SA’s institutions too.
For a start, there is often a lack of response from the police when crimes are reported. In the case of the recent alleged rapes at Krugersdorp, for example, community members say they have long been trying to alert the police to the problems of crime, but little was done about it.
“Mob justice [occurs] out of frustration [because] communities aren’t getting a response. There is no trust in law enforcement,” Misago said at the Wits seminar. “This is one of the ways communities are getting involved in migration management. It’s because the state isn’t seen to be getting involved.”
The same can be said about holding to account those who commit crimes against foreigners.
Xenophobic violence is a hate crime, but you see the same violence recurring in the same places, Misago said — and little by way of anyone being held accountable for it. “In this way the state becomes complicit.”
Misago believes the deficit in governance, at the local level in particular, is the main driver of xenophobic violence. It breaks out, he said, in areas where governance is “absent, weak or complicit”.
Weak local government manifests “though lack of trust in the leadership and lack of effective conflict resolution mechanisms, and [it] creates leadership vacuums”.
This has undermined efforts to address xenophobic violence going all the way back to 2008.
“Xenophobic violence not only expresses the crisis in the rule of law,” Misago said. “It further undermines what is in these processes.”
Loren Landau, professor of migration and development at the University of Oxford, tells the FM the xenophobic attacks are so bad that “we are one instance away from mass mobilisation”.
Some have also suggested that there might be a repeat of the scale of violence that was seen in KZN and Gauteng last July. Though the violence then wasn’t exclusively or even principally directed at foreign migrants, there is a fear of what might happen when there is retaliation.
Any such violence would likely be more scattered now, though, and less orchestrated.
“I don’t think there is a central body that would trigger it this time,” says Landau.
But xenophobia has found expression in the political sphere, where, for example, ActionSA leader Herman Mashaba’s opportunistic stance on curbing immigration appears to have won him votes in the past.
The ANC, which suffered large losses at the polls last year, appears to be adopting the strategy, too. This was confirmed by the party’s tough talk at its recent policy conference about restricting immigration.
Some party leaders took matters further, travelling to Krugersdorp to protest against illegal immigrants, zama zamas (illegal miners) and rapists.
Some ANC members have expressed unease about the message the party is sending, saying it simply plays into xenophobic sentiments.
“The ANC is not just rotten at the bottom, but all the way to the top, and we are seeing it in this response too,” a senior party member tells the FM. Some have also questioned how a party that fought against racial intolerance can take such an anti-African stance.
On the continental stage, SA risks becoming an outcast if such attacks continue. Already diplomats say conversations with their peers on the continent often start with questions about the violence.
And while xenophobia worldwide is on the rise, SA is the only country in Africa where the violence has been so sustained, Eddy Maloka, CEO of the AU’s African Peer Review Mechanism, tells the FM.
That body has been warning of growing anti-immigrant sentiment in SA since at least 2006.
“We are a continental body, so we are there to work and support member states,” Maloka says. “But action depends on political will.”
He adds that SA could benefit from the AU conference on immigration governance, set for later this year.
Landau agrees that the AU could do more, given how leaders in SA have politicised the issue of immigration management. “This is a short-term thing that may win them the election but it won’t create the jobs that are needed,” he says.
It’s also not wise in the long term, due to the economic contribution immigrant businesses make. And it could leave politicians in something of a catch-22.
“If they don’t get rid of the immigrants, it looks like they failed on their promise,” Landau says. “If they do, people will wonder what happened to the jobs they were promised.”
Sadly, at a time when sober minds are needed, those seem to be in short supply.
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