Vol. 72/No. 25      June 23, 2008

Many demonstrators displayed signs saying “Xenophobia hurts like apartheid” and “We stand against xenophobia,” the Mail and Guardian reported.

The anti-immigrant attacks began on May 11 in the township of Alexandra, just outside Johannesburg. Like other townships in South Africa much of Alexandra lacks electricity, running water, and basic sanitation. Many immigrants, as well as South Africans who relocate from rural areas to find work, build rudimentary shelters on unoccupied land in the townships. The violence spread over the course of two weeks to other squatter settlements near the cities of Cape Town and Durban.

Mobs of men armed with sticks, clubs, machetes, and other weapons went through township dwellings beating immigrants. Among those attacked were workers from Zimbabwe, Mozambique, and Malawi. They were forced to flee from their homes, which were then looted and set on fire.

The attackers confronted people asking if they were “foreigners” and yelling that amakwerekwere must go back home, that they were taking “South African” jobs. “Amakwerekwere” is a derogatory term used to describe immigrants from other African nations.

Some immigrants were identified by being asked to pronounce “elbow” in Zulu, the language spoken by a majority of Africans in South Africa. Attacks also targeted some nonimmigrant South African ethnicities including Pedis and Shangaans.

South Africa has an unemployment rate of about 40 percent according to unofficial statistics. The figure is much higher among the younger population.  
 
Police slow to act
The South African police responded slowly to the violence, causing it to escalate, said African National Congress deputy president Kgalema Motlanthe. A study released in 2006 by the Centre for the Study of Violence and Reconciliation said that police in Johannesburg displayed “a lot of resentment” toward immigrants. The report stated that the cops routinely arrested immigrants to make arrest quotas and try to extort money from these workers.

The South African National Defence Force was deployed May 21 in townships affected by the violence. About 1,400 arrests of people suspected of involvement in the anti-immigrant attacks have been made so far. Nearly 70 percent of those arrested are unemployed youth. Special courts will be used to prosecute the detainees.

At least 50,000 immigrants have returned to Mozambique or Zimbabwe since the violence began. Tens of thousands of homeless immigrants have sought shelter in churches, community centers, and police stations. The government has set up several holding camps with tents for the displaced.  
 
Hostels as recruiting grounds
Several organizations are seeking an injunction to prevent the removal of some refugees from police stations to camp sites that are located adjacent to hostels. The hostels are single male-only facilities that have been identified as recruiting grounds for the anti-immigrant gangs.

The hostels were part of the migrant system of labor under apartheid, the system of total segregation of Africans and whites overthrown in 1994. The apartheid regime imposed strict controls on the movement of African workers. Those workers from rural areas who got work near the cities, such as in the mines, could not bring their families with them. They had to live in sex-segregated hostels provided by the state. The hostels still exist today and they are where many unemployed youth in South Africa are found.

In the 1980s and 1990s hostels became a recruiting ground for counterrevolutionary vigilantes who carried out violent attacks against supporters of the ANC, which was leading the fight to overturn apartheid. The attackers were armed and organized by the white minority government.

In a speech given to mine workers in 1991, ANC leader Nelson Mandela said, “The violence is designed to create divisions among the African people, especially between Zulu and Xhosa, hostel dweller and township resident. Mine workers have a very important role to play in defusing the tensions. Hostels have been identified as sources of violence, where guns are kept and weapons training takes place.

“This violence only serves to enslave us, turning brother against brother while white South Africa pretends to stand above the conflict. It presents the picture that South Africa can only know stability and prosperity with whites in control. We call on you to organize the hostels. Act together with the township residents to isolate those who bring death and destruction.”  
 
Miners union opposes attacks
The National Union of Miners of South Africa has launched a national education program against xenophobia and tribalism in the workplace in the wake of the May anti-immigrant attacks. The campaign was launched in honor of Walter Ntombela, shop steward of the National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa, and others who died. Formerly from Mozambique, he lived in South Africa for 10 years. He was killed protecting his wife and three children, who escaped.

As part of the campaign the union is also demanding conversion of single-sex hostels into family units.

The ANC Youth League denounced the attacks. We “condemn with contempt those who participate in these criminal activities using the name of the ANC and singing revolutionary songs like ‘Umshini Wami’ [‘Bring Me My Machine Gun’] while perpetrating crime,” the statement said. “If any of our members are found to be participating in these activities, we expect our structures to take the harshest possible action against them.” “Umshini Wami” is a song associated with ANC president Jacob Zuma. It became a rallying cry for his supporters when he campaigned against Thabi Mbeki, the president of South Africa, for the ANC post.

It was nearly two weeks after the violence started before Mbeki made a television and radio broadcast. He described the attacks on fellow African brothers and sisters as criminal acts “opposed to everything that our freedom from apartheid represents.”

The reality is that the ANC-led government’s policy on immigrants is not substantially different from that of the apartheid regime before it. The capitalist class in South Africa relies on immigrants as a form of cheap labor, especially in the mines and on the large farms.

Commercial farms located on the border and along immigration routes have been recruiting immigrant workers. The employers encourage conflicts between the immigrants and Africans born in South Africa in order to promote divisions and disunity in the working class.

Since 1994 immigration to South Africa from the rest of Africa has increased. As social and economic conditions deteriorated in Zimbabwe since 2000, the number of workers and peasants from Zimbabwe has increased, displacing the number from Mozambique, previously the highest in South Africa.

An estimated 5 million undocumented workers are in South Africa. Along with the influx came an increase in detentions and deportations. In 2005 there were 210,000 deportations, up from 167,000 the previous year. Deportations of Zimbabweans has increased from 46,000 in 2000 to more than 97,000 in 2005. That figure reached almost 80,000 between May and December 2006 alone.  
 
 
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