Poverty breeding resentment of foreigners in SA

By Tererai Karimakwenda
13 January 2006

We have run a series of reports on the growing resentment against foreigners in South Africa. Several Zimbabweans have died over the past 2 months in riots attributed to xenophobia, but poverty appears to be the real problem fuelling the violence. Although other foreign nationals have also been targeted, the huge volume of Zimbabweans fleeing as the crisis at home gets worse has made them particularly vulnerable. On Thursday, writer and Washington Times correspondent Geoff Hill said it is the internal migration of the rural population into the urban centres that is creating unemployment in South Africa, not the foreigners.

Zimbabwean journalist Steve Paradza, who is based in South Africa, said xenophobia is prevalent among the poorest of the poor. These are the uneducated locals who have waited years for housing and jobs which the government has not delivered. Paradza said Zimbabweans are creating successful home industries with free water and electricity provided in the semi-urban informal settlements. This has also added to the resentment.
He added that the locals don’t even want the type of jobs foreigners are taking, like garbage collection, but become very jealous when they succeed and begin dating local women.

Paradza paints a picture of life in South Africa’s semi-urban ghettoes that is forcing one group to dislike the other. He said the poor foreigners, especially Zimbabweans, are setting up their own home industries as they do back home. Carpentry shops and auto mechanics are common, as are dress making shops and food vendors. Paradza said the successful Zimbabweans are renting shacks from poor South Africans who simply want the cash without asking questions about legal status. Many refugees are making a success of these opportunities. But it is not being received well by the South Africa’s “poorest of the poor”. And since institutions are more difficult to tackle, outsiders become the recipients of all the anger and frustration meant for the government.