EDITORIAL | Xenophobic attacks fill SA’s policy vacuum

A showdown between undocumented immigrants and incensed locals appears billed for March 21 when we commemorate Human Rights Day. 

Whether it will materialise is up in the air. 

We hope though that it fizzles out ahead of this important day on which, 62 years ago, about 69 people were brutally killed and 180 injured by police after anti-pass protests by about 7,000 people. 

As the nation plans to reflect on this day, a poster was circulated indicating immigrants intended to protest — or push back — against clear acts of vigilantism they have experienced. A poster about the event that circulated over the weekend was later dismissed as fake. While this offers transient relief, the tensions between locals and immigrants continue to simmer — with Operation Dudula figurehead Nhlanhla Lux promising to cross swords with protesters in the streets. 

On the surface, it seems in all our interests that this war of words must come to naught.

From the outset, it ought to have been clear to policymakers that the country’s public resources and economic activity in the main cities are limited.

The locals believe their joblessness and therefore their poverty can be traced back to unregulated entry and discernible economic dominance by immigrants in townships and villages across the country. The locals feel crowded out of their own localities. The immigrants, meanwhile, believe the idea of locals being out of jobs because of them is lazy scapegoating of equally poor, vulnerable and desperate foreigners. 

Last week, the tensions in Alexandra township, Johannesburg, turned violent, with police called in after the destruction of property. Labour and employment minister Thulas Nxesi, whose department has issued draft regulations proposing that some jobs be preserved for locals, told a presidential service delivery imbizo in North West that government condemns the use of force to settle what is a complex matter. “We are a country which has signed a number of international obligations on how to deal with refugees. They also have human rights. We cannot treat them like animals,” said Nxesi. Minister in the presidency Mondli Gungubele told the media at a recent post-cabinet briefing: “There are certain sets of jobs which we think need to be protected for South Africans, but the basic issue here is that as we move towards an Africa that is seamless and one, we walk that path with legality.”

The root cause of the tension appears obvious: a tussle for limited economic activity between those at the bottom rung of our economy. The solution therefore can’t be a zero-sum game on a day like Human Rights Day. While ministers and opposition politicians have called on police to do their work, which must be supported, we must indicate that this cannot in any way constitute a more lasting solution. The genesis of our challenges is to be found in policy vacuity, nonexistent borders, undefined Afrocentricity and finite economic opportunities.

While our laws and international treaties clearly explain how refugees must be treated, the issue seems to be a policy vacuum on individual rights, especially relating to people who have simply crossed the border not because they’re running away from war but in search of economic opportunities. The latest draft regulations seem to close this hole — 25 years later. The question for many facing the economic crunch seems to be: what use will the regulations be if the borders remain nothing but picket fences? For years, the ANC government, some of whose leaders spent years in exile in other African countries, seemed caught up between a yearning for pan-African relations that, at the same time, militated against enforcement of border control that would have sent Afrophobic messages across the continent. This led to a steady influx, leading to what locals now call overcrowding by “illegal immigrants”.

From the outset, it ought to have been clear to policymakers that the country’s public resources and economic activity in the main cities are limited. An influx will come with numerous social challenges that our amenities can’t cope with. Police resources, for example, that should be used to investigate crimes such as murder and rape are now used simply to keep the peace between locals and foreigners. This is anathema for our growth and development. 

That said, those who are in the country without documentation must be sent home as the borders are fixed. To do so is not to be Afrophobic. It is to ensure we know everyone who is within our borders. That can’t be too much to ask. 

At the same time, our leaders must treat the spectre of unemployment, at its highest ever, as the emergency that it is. If not, once the foreigners are forced out, the internal desperation will lead locals to turn on each other, if not against the middle class and then business and government. This is a ticking time bomb we neglect at our own peril.