EDITORIAL | Politicians flirting with xenophobia are playing a deadly game

Imagine sitting in the international departures lounge at the airport with your boss, waiting to catch a plane for a business trip. Two policemen approach, demanding to search your luggage for drugs because your boss is a foreign national. This is how a traumatic 12 days started for Cynthia Mobuhle Khedama, who ended up being detained in filthy police cells after a wrongful arrest. At the time, she was the victim of identity theft and her identity number was wrongly linked to a fraud accused. She tried to explain this to the police who pounced on her, but they sought all sorts of reasons to disregard her, including resorting to xenophobic remarks against her boss and boyfriend. She has now won a damages claim of R1m against police, with the judge saying he would have made the amount higher had she asked for more.

What makes Khedama’s story even more disturbing is the fact that the xenophobic slurs came from people in positions of authority — who abused that authority to cause damage to an innocent citizen. Though one of the officers denied using any derogatory terms, Durban high court judge Graham Lopes accepted Khedama’s version of events. His scathing judgment should be widely celebrated, just as the department of employment and labour should be applauded for taking a stand against EFF leader Julius Malema, who targeted foreign nationals this week.

Malema’s move to “inspect” restaurants at Mall of Africa in Midrand, Gauteng, to check the ratio between South Africans and foreign national workers was uncalled for. Asked by Sunday Times Daily if it was a legal act, labour lawyer Dunstan Farrell described it as “discriminatory, racist and xenophobic”. The labour department’s swift response should also be applauded. Labour minister Thulas Nxesi made it very clear the EFF was out of line. “The premise of our legislation is predicated upon protecting all employees despite their nationality as long as employment relationship can be identified. The same rights accorded to a SA employee, such rights apply to foreign national employees,” he said.

Though the EFF insisted its “inspection” was a peaceful action, an underlying message of hatred from people in authority can cause huge damage in a country where tensions between locals and foreign nationals have been simmering below the surface — and often boiling over — for a long time. It is a deadly game. Amnesty International has also weighed in: “Blaming foreign nationals for the country’s unemployment problem will only fan the xenophobic flames against this vulnerable group, because they are always used as scapegoats for various problems facing the country.”

The EFF’s leaders are not the only culprits. Many actions and statements against foreign nationals have occured recently, including an “Operation Dudula” that is being launched in Soweto under the slogan: “We are tired, enough is enough, SA Citizens first now!” This while the Patriotic Alliance’s Gayton McKenzie this week raided a shop in Eldorado Park, southwest of Johannesburg, claiming it was owned by “illegal foreigners”. 

SA has experienced some of its worst post-democracy moments because of xenophobia. A wave of violence started in Alexandra in Johannesburg in May 2008, spreading to other provinces and causing more than 60 deaths and uncountable injuries and displacements. Who can forget the Sunday Times photos of a brutal attack on Mozambican Emmanuel Sithole in April 2015, when another spate of deadly attacks on foreign nationals was being executed? Not to mention the everyday harassment and assaults that never get reported. As SA grapples with high unemployment and poverty rates, that frustration should not be taken out on the most vulnerable in our society. Our figures of authority should be actively seeking solutions for our joblessness crisis and finding ways to build safe spaces instead of fuelling the flames of hatred.