What should business leaders make of the rise of the violent, antiforeigner, largely township-based Operation Dudula movement? Last Thursday the "leader" of Operation Dudula, Nhlanhla "Lux" Dlamini, was arrested after the EFF helped one of its members to lay charges against him at Dobsonville police station. The EFF member’s house had been raided by a crowd alleged to be part of Operation Dudula. They claimed he was a drug dealer.
The first thing about Operation Dudula and its allied organisations, such as #PutSouthAfricansFirst, is that they won’t go away. They have been allowed to flourish by an incompetent, slothful, corrupt and uncaring government. Their presence is a direct result of the government’s failure to heed warnings to act decisively on the economy, illegal immigration and regional instability. These organisations’ ambit may extend to raiding street vendors for now, but their reach will affect various aspects of SA policy for decades to come.
Dlamini told TimesLive three weeks ago that he is aiming far higher than the townships where he has largely operated so far: "We are not going to act like politicians and have a 20-year plan for such a simple thing [as] dealing with illegal foreigners … We are going against the low-hanging fruits because our people want change now. But once we are done with the low-hanging fruits, we will climb the tree and go higher to the most difficult, which is the bigger economic spaces, such as banks and other critical economic components."
Dlamini’s "movement" is already shaking up the political firmament. ANC leaders are speaking an immigration language that is deeply and offensively embedded in xenophobia. For example, defence minister Thandi Modise told a press briefing in February that the government sometimes doesn’t have the courage to call out foreign nationals who engage in criminal activities for fear of being labelled xenophobic.
"The truth of the matter is that most of the criminal syndicates are not run by South Africans and we are too ashamed to say that," she said.
Where is the evidence? Why hasn’t she and her government done anything about it?
Most of the ‘solutions’ being touted by politicians now are populist claptrap
The minister of home affairs, Aaron Motsoaledi, has been hogging the headlines lately as he unveils new immigration laws. In just the past two months, Motsoaledi has found the energy to introduce employment quotas for foreign nationals and review three other pieces of legislation dealing with immigration and refugees.
It’s not just the ruling party that’s joining in on the "bad immigrants" party. The EFF, which has flip-flopped on immigration for years, finds itself "outshone" by Operation Dudula and its charismatic leader.
To illustrate the EFF’s confusion on the issue, consider this: in January, EFF leader Julius Malema and his members besieged restaurants around Joburg and demanded to be told how many foreign workers these businesses employed. Dudula does exactly the same thing (mainly to poor black people) in the townships where it operates.
What’s the difference? Dlamini and Dudula are eating into Malema’s political space — desperate, poor, unemployed youth who will follow a populist leader anywhere.
So, in addition to the many other problems we have as a country, the antiforeigner movement is here to stay. Instead of fixing the problems that have led to this situation in the first place, our lazy politicians will climb on the antiforeigner bandwagon.
I am not surprised we are here now. The warnings have been numerous. In October 2020, Human Rights Watch warned of possible xenophobic violence in SA. The government did nothing. In the same month, a survey by the Human Sciences Research Council found that only a fifth of the surveyed population was welcoming to migrants, 26% was strongly opposed to migrants and 54% had mixed feelings on refugees, asylum seekers and cross-border migrants.
The government did nothing. Many of the "solutions" being touted by politicians now are cosmetic and will not solve the challenge we face with anti-immigrant sentiment and xenophobia. Indeed, most of the "solutions" are populist claptrap.
Even if Dudula dissipates and dies, the antiforeigner genie is out the bottle. It’s going to get worse.
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