......All African brothers (are/are not) welcomed according to their combustibility as part of the "African Renaissance" principles..........

....Take your pick..........

What an unmitigated bunch of BS.
Could someone please come out of their ivory towers and alternate universes long enough to actually find out the REAL reasons. This attitude of 'ignore it long enough and it will go away' is not going to work.

@RSA.MommaCyndi

Kindly download and refer to a document published by Centre for the Study of Violence and Reconciliation in 2001, titled: A foreign experience: Violence, crime and xenophobia during South Africa's transition, by Bronwyn Harris. It might give you some insight re "the alternate universes".

This ass as all the the other ANC "experts" keep on hinting that apartheid and racism are the main causes of everything. What the h.ell has segregation to do with xenophobia?.
The real cause of this phenomena is simply the fact that SA's poor are fed-up to suffer poverty whilst these aliens are being afforded all the opportunities and at the same time overloading the resources like education and health that SA citizens are entitled to.

At first I was quite fine about having foreigners move into our neighborhoods. This until I saw their foul attitudes towards the local communities. These people are rude and treat the people with disrespect. Their shops are dirty, they have bad attitudes and are very arrogant. Also, the huge drug problem we have is directly related to these people, Nigerians, Somalians, Moroccans, etc. I for one would like to see them packing and leave this country, as they have brought only trouble with them. It might sound that I am harsh, but I have had more negative experiences with these people plus they are a burden on the already scarce resources.

ilove the truth, im sure you are the suburb girl, ag shame enjoy

I don't think anyone is against the productive 'foreigners' we are blessed to have in SA. The Zim teachers, Nigerian lab techs etc are well received and appreciated (as far as I can see). The problem is that too many criminal syndicates have smoogled themselves in too.

The Nigerian drug lord problem isn't a figment of our imagination and the Somalian shop keepers who can sell a carton of cigarettes at R80 a pop cannot be ignored. We won't even bother to mention the Russian mafia that seems to have taken over large portions of the country. Then we have the border jumpers who have no alternative but to resort to crime to stay alive. Throw in an entire RDP housing scheme with nothing but Zimbabweans in it (there by Rooihuiskraal) and tempers start steaming.

@RSA>MommaCyndi.
You are quite correct in what you're saying, there are productive people out there of various origins. I saw you earlier referred to "local perspectives" and here is my perspective.
The article is referring to somewhat “misleading historical factors here – the reference to “long history of racial and class divisions”. I’m South African citizen who currently resides in Gauteng but have roots in the Limpopo Province. Throughout the years as I grew up I saw a lot of black business men and woman establishing themselves as business people despite adverse political, social and economic conditions. Indeed, others became successful while some didn’t. That’s the name of the game, not so? Throughout these many years there’d always been the urge to succeed and show the “other” world that they [black business people] had the acumen to run businesses successfully, just like any other racial groups. This quest was started in the 20s and 30s through into the 40s by people who had lived in the then Witwatersrand, especially in the black townships of Sophiatown and Alexandra where they were inspired by the Indians and Chinese traders. The 50s saw the intensification of ventures of this nature buoyed on by Apartheid laws that prohibited Indian from trading in the homelands. This went on throughout the 60s and early 70s, a period that saw the founding of black owned wholesalers/mutual groups in places like Venda (Vendaland Trading Company), Gazankulu and Lebowa – all three were former homelands. These were empowerment ventures never seen before in those years and in that neck of the woods. These were ventures in which people of varying ages and levels of education invested their hard earned money. It worked.
Inevitably, in Venda for instance, tables were turned when on acquiring nominal independence Venda was opened up for “international” business. Big players like Cash Build, Metro Cash ‘n Carry moved in. In the late 80s, a new “breed” of traders surfaced, Pakistanis who had settled in the region as expatriate educators or civil servants. They decided to try their luck [nothing wrong with this] selling generic goods to an "unsophisticated market". It worked and word went out. The advent of democracy in the 90s saw the opening of the flood gates, the arrival of larger groups of Pakistani nationals, some arriving legally while others arrived illegally.
I hope this is the “local perspective” you’re looking for and here are some thoughts re way forward and I hope we shall afterward have “non-vuvuzela” discourse about them:
I’d like to appeal to the fundamental principles of the black economic empowerment policies hinged on the fact that the inequalities of the past must be reversed while the state and the private sector strives to uplift the livelihood of the majority of South African population. As pointed out earlier, Limpopo people and many other disempowered South Africans had tried their level best in attempting to uplift themselves through formal and informal trading initiatives and unfortunately their efforts became undone by forces beyond their control. My argument is; if a local black South African informal trader is currently failing to run his or her informal business effectively due to lack of resources and skills, institutions and programmes that are in place [in various government departments] should be used to mentor the affected person(s) until a state of business “maturity” is attained. Yes, one is aware of the free market principle at play in this country, but safety nets need to be put in place for the sake of local informal business people. Yes the hordes are already here and we need to live the fact, but something needs to be done to stop the tide in a responsible manner. The good thing is that the ANC, the ruling party, has started talking about the dilemma - according reports on the recent policy conference.

Xenophobia is the black South African's Apartheid. They can blame the past like the Afrikaaners blamed the British in the early days of Apartheid, but history will also only blame them.