Focus on Xenophobia
Is Government nurturing xenophobia?
    by Steven Gordon

The current xenophobic brutality of the South African townships is not, as ANC President Jacob Zuma believes, ''senseless''. 

The violence directed at migrants does not spring from the empty air or burst forth from the ground fully formed. Nor can the violence be described as a mere consequence or after-effect of poverty, unfulfilled economic expectations or the failure of law and order. The crime epidemic, the current housing shortage and the failure of service delivery within many townships and urban spaces cannot explain or justify the sheer scale of the violence, why immigrants were targeted, or the speed at which it spread.

The recent wave of extreme xenophobic violence only serves to highlight a trend that has been developing within South Africa since the dawn of our celebrated democracy. For over a decade, state officials, law enforcement personnel and ordinary citizens have participated in abuses, frequently violent abuses, against foreigners. These abuses were, more often than not, sanctioned or at least ignored by the legitimate guardians of constitutional law. 

 
Xenophobia, in South Africa, is not based on conflicting ethnicities but rather on the position of the immigrant before the law and lawmaking bodies. This moves beyond the law's failed promise to protect immigrants and rests with the treatment of foreigners in the eyes of the law.   

South African immigration law and policy is characterised by ambiguities, contradictions and confusing doublespeak. The legislation swings back and forth between the idealism of the post-apartheid revolution and a deep-seated fear of immigrants and immigration. South African immigration policy 'guarantees' the harmonisation of rights between citizens and foreigners and promises that the latter group will enjoy the same freedoms and privileges as their citizen counterparts. In the same breath however, the policy justifies restricting legal immigration into the country using the popular lexicon of the xenophobe. Indeed the Immigration Act echoes the popular xenophobic argument that migrants are linked to crime, unemployment, increased pressure on social services, and corruption.

The ambiguities and contradictions that imbue this policy have spawned a legal vacuum regarding immigrants. The regulation of migrants rests less with the law and lawmakers but with law enforcers. Indeed, central to the implementation of immigration law has been the legal authorities charged with its execution: police, border units, ad hoc special units, commandos and even vigilante-style operations  

These stalwart defenders of the public good have pursued their mandate with a zeal and fanaticism that contrasts sharply with their lethargy in other areas of law enforcement. Since the beginning of this year, police have invaded homes, churches and civic centres in the righteous pursuit of foreigners classified as 'illegal' in a series of campaigns to crackdown on unauthorised or undocumented immigrants. Granted special powers of search and seizure by the immigration legislation, the authorities arrested and detained hundreds of suspected illegal immigrants without recourse to constitutional norms or values. Reports of police brutality and corruption during these operations were rampant and went unpunished. According to some sources, valid identity documents were destroyed, bribes were extorted to avoid arrest, and detainees were brutality beaten and even raped.

Since documents can be forged, possession of identity books or refugee papers was not an indication of innocence. The primary strategy for detecting illegal immigrants was to use civil society and the community as watchdogs. This strategy encouraged communities to identify suspected unauthorised immigrants, offering rewards for calling special telephone numbers and reporting on 'illegals'.  Mobilising communities to act as informers unintentionally broadcasts an anti-immigrant logic and inadvertently resurrects xenophobia as a strategy of discouraging foreigners from coming to the country.

It seems to the watching public that the 'unlawfulness' or 'illegality' of these foreigners is such that these individuals are not quite legal subjects, not quite protected by the norms and values of our constitutional democracy. The immigrant is treated as an exception and, as such, is relegated to a space outside the normal workings of the law. In this space, the foreigner is deprived of many of her rights and constitutional protections to the point that committing any act against her would no longer appear as a crime.

In effect, the isolation and persecution arising from the current immigration policy fuels the xenophobia of the general public. The absence of protection and the anti-immigrant sentiments of the law and law enforcement agents provided the opportunity and justification for growing tensions with foreigners. The flames of xenophobia have inadvertently been fed and nursed, the stage was unconsciously set, and unpremeditatedly, the spring was wound up. Alexandra was the tension unwinding, scything through the country: like an underground fire with just enough ventilation.  

The current violence is the inherent discord in immigration policy made real and as an anti-immigration strategy, the results speak for themselves. Foreigners are fleeing the townships surrounding Johannesburg in their thousands. Many will not return to claim their houses or belongings, if indeed these assets survived the looting and the fires. Some have even taken the dusty road back to their nations of birth, too afraid to remain in South Africa.

This is not the only xenophobic violence that South Africa has witnessed and if immigration legislation remains unchanged, more will follow. Despite the strong response of the South African police force and the army to this current crisis, the 'success' of this strategy in fulfilling the logic of immigration law will undoubtedly encourage similar riots and add fuel to the flames.    

 
Steven Gordon is a MA graduate with the Global Studies Programme. His thesis was titled: The trade union response to alien workers within post-apartheid South Africa.

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