The Heat: Migrant Crisis in South Africa

The Heat

Xenophobia in South Africa

Migrants from other parts of the continent are being blamed for the lack of jobs available to South Africans and the rise in crime throughout the country.

 

Jacob ZumaGenerally, there’s a narrative that is always attached to us, as Africans or as Blacks – when other people demonstrate they’re not welcoming the foreigners, it’s not said they’re
xenophobic. As you know, there’s an ongoing problem in Europe wherein the refugees that are coming, countries say they cannot come in, they don’t want them but nobody says they’re xenophobic. It’s like when there is something wrong with Africans, it’s corruption, if it’s done NOT by us, it’s collusion.

-South African President Jacob Zuma

 

Africans are being attacked in the streets, their homes and businesses burned to the ground. Many believe these attacks are not xenophobia, but an Afrophobia– discrimination synonymous with apartheid, reserved for other Africans.

CGTN’s Yolisa Njamela reports.

Countries all over the African continent played a huge rule in South Africa’s successful fight against apartheid. Are those countries still considered allies in the fight against xenophobia and discrimination, or unwelcome troublemakers?

 

“I want to insist that the majority of immigrants in South Africa have no criminal
intentions. There are those few who may have criminal intentions, who engage in criminal acts. As the department of Home Affairs charged with the responsibility of managing international migration, we wish to see a South Africa in which those who commit crime and corruption are not profiled according to nationality but are dealt with as criminals by the agencies of the state mandated to deal with that area. It cannot be the responsibility of vigilantes, it cannot be the responsibility of anybody taking the law into their own hands.”

Malusi Gigaba, South African Minister Home Affairs

 

For more on the situation in South Africa:

  • Rodney Tshaka, a South African professor of theology at the University of South Africa
  • Kayode Ogunadamisi, a Nigerian commentator and journalist
  • And Nii Akuetteh, an Africa policy analyst

For more: