The government calls it Operation Fiela. "Fiela" is a word in the Sotho group of languages meaning "to sweep away; to clean up; to remove dirt". Last week, the police, the army and Home Affairs officials moved into Hillbrow and elsewhere in South Africa, set up virtual roadblocks and asked "foreigners" to produce documents proving that they were in the country legally.Who is a foreigner? Certainly not Radovan Krejcir, the Czech fugitive who is suspected of running a vast criminal enterprise in South Africa and whom the authorities allowed to flourish here. A foreigner seems to be, once again, anyone who is dark-skinned, cannot speak Zulu and cannot produce some form of dompas.Last week Minister in the Presidency Jeff Radebe announced: "Operation Fiela is aimed at ridding South Africa of illegal weapons, drug dens and prostitution rings. We intend to sweep our public places clean so that people can be and feel safe."Listen to those words. Sweep our public places clean? This sounds like King Goodwill Zwelithini saying foreigners bring dirt to the cities through their businesses. Listen to Radebe's words carefully and you will feel the chill. He is implying that our fellow Africans are "dirt" that needs to be swept away, that crime is committed by foreigners only.When a minister starts believing such nonsense then we are in trouble.Over the past few weeks many South Africans of conscience agonised over the inhumanity and callousness of our fellow countrymen as they once again went on the rampage, cold-bloodedly killing fellow Africans.We have to wonder what it means when one of our young men raises a blade and kills someone because they are from elsewhere on the continent. We have to wonder what it means about our way of raising boys, of building a society based on the principle of the Nguni expression umuntu ngu muntu ngabantu (one is human through humanity to others).We also have to ask whether it is South Africans at the individual level who are xenophobic or whether the problem lies elsewhere.From the statements by Radebe, and the actions of our government, it seems to me that the state has become increasingly xenophobic. Its language is the language of xenophobes. Its actions are the actions of xenophobes.The quote above from Radebe is no different from words that have been spouted by French far-right leader Jean-Marie le Pen, who has on numerous occasions called for illegal immigrants to be put in camps. "Refugee camp" suggestions were also recently made by ANC secretary-general Gwede Mantashe.The words of xenophobes, though, always come back to haunt them. Who will be stopped by the Operation Fiela tough guys? The case of former Reserve Bank governor Tito Mboweni's son is instructive. The boy was pulled out of a minibus taxi on his way to having breakfast with a friend in Sandton City, Johannesburg, in 2013.His crime? He was "too dark". Operation Fiela will lead to thousands being similarly violated.This is what happens every day in South Africa. Black people are stopped and harassed and treated with the indignity that apartheid police meted out during the days of the pass system. Black people are stopped and searched and asked to speak Zulu or Sotho to demonstrate that they are born of this soil.What is going on is not that South Africans are xenophobic. It is that the state, failing to deal with the fundamental problems besetting South Africa, has chosen to become xenophobic. Instead of making sure we have jobs for the millions of our unemployed youths the state is resorting to institutionalised xenophobia.It is a reactionary stance, one that is built on the views of ignoramuses such as Zwelithini. It does not reflect a government that is prepared to dump populism and deal with the real issues. It reflects a poverty of ideas, a failure of imagination and humanity.What now? Anyone who thinks that something like Operation Fiela will stop xenophobic attacks is deluded. Indeed, its implementation will lead to more and more South Africans believing the government lie that foreigners are not wanted here. They will take it as a sign that they are correct in blaming foreigners for their problems.As their problems increase, they will once again look around them and blame foreigners. They will kill again...