Attacks on foreigners by socio-economically deprived citizens, squeezed by the realities of global migration, are an indictment on the government, writes Susan Booysen.

Johannesburg – The government was being held to ransom this week – caught in a grip between morally indefensible xenophobia, global migration and acknowledging that grassroots feelings against foreigners, largely African, have roots in the dented dream of democracy.

An escalation of ongoing xenophobia since 2008, rather than a new outbreak, the week’s anti-foreigner events held up a mirror for South Africans and their government. The events were a microcosm of much that has gone wrong in the globally-linked democratic South Africa and reflected uncomfortable realities of citizen reaction to having lost both the 1994 ideal and the trust that the government will make things right.

By this weekend, the spread of Afro-xenophobic attacks around the country indicted the perpetrators. These citizens suffer socio-economic deprivation and relate their real or imagined experiences of disrespect and deficits to their inability to compete with foreigners.

They are squeezed by the harsh realities of global migration, while they are still clutching at the fruits of their national liberation.

The outbreaks reminded us that many community protests include criminals who loot because they can. Chances are, they will not be brought to book because communities shield them, police look on, release follows arrest.

Even more, the week brought evidence of marauding mobs hungry for violent confrontation – also with those who denounce xenophobia. The dishonour, however, extends beyond these underclasses to the middle classes, who live aloof from the suffering that comes with ongoing poverty and emasculation in the race for scarce resources.

The week’s events were inescapably also an indictment of the government. To be sure, it gave a formidable display of what can be done if political will arrives. The week’s concerted government actions and declarations contrasted with non-existent government repertoires when xenophobic cases of the past six years had been swept under the community protest carpet.

The chickens of the de facto policy of open borders came home to roost. The president’s parliamentary announcement of sharper border control confirmed the prevailing policy failure (besides appearing as using a teaspoon to stem a tide).

In place of feeble responses, the government this week delivered two presidential interventions, the security cluster stepped in and specific ministers launched reprimands, anti-xenophobic campaigns and deployed more police and other security forces. There was heightened humanitarian action and refugee (née displacement) centres sprang up.

The ANC, Cosatu and SACP issued statements and held briefings to condemn killing and looting.

The government met ambassadors of countries whose citizens were affected.

If this hive of activity had been unfolding regularly in the past six years, South Africa might have escaped much of the embarrassment of being a contender for skunk of the year. There was a display of leadership, even if Parliament, the cabinet and the president might have little standing with the perpetrators.

Of course, not all of this week’s government actions were exemplary. Feeble rhetoric repeated itself. Criminality and national disgrace became “unacceptable”, rather than “morally reprehensible”.

King Goodwill Zwelithini got unparalleled kid-glove treatment. President Jacob Zuma reinforced national liberation rhetoric in relating how the ANC was treated generously when in exile but ignored that, in political struggle days, it was governments hosting the ANC – its leaders often resided in middle-class suburbs, commanding their members who were in out-of-the-way camps, often being supported by the international community.

The government was silent on the fact that the xenophobic violence displaces blame for socio-economic deprivation. While African “foreigners” are blamed for at least some of the social ills permeating township and informal settlement life, including health, educational and social service infrastructure, the ANC government is apportioned less of the blame.

The middle class, generally white citizens specifically, and the ruling class obviously, benefit from blame displacement. It is foreigners’ shops that go shutters-up, not the Johannesburg Stock Exchange or Umhlanga’s Gateway Mall.

Middle-class life in South Africa continued unaffected, while the underclasses were fighting it out, except that their underpaid Zimbabwean waiters and gardeners might be on the run.

The ruling class obviously suffers being shamed by fellow African governments and embarrassed by social media rumours that everybody from Boko Haram to Renamo’s Afonso Dhlakama are set to launch rescue missions.

The ANC government obviously does not “design” its policy of open borders with a view to getting paperless foreigners to come and help share blame for delivery deficits. But it is certainly one of the de facto effects of the policy of limited control of immigration from African countries.

This is besides the fact that the influx and the added stress on social services strain the fiscus, from which the ANC government then suffers. Meanwhile, cheap and docile (fearing deportation) labour helps capital.

Afro-patriotic, pan-Africanist and universalist rhetoric flowed to try to subdue xenophobic bouts in which the Afrophobia seemed to include shopkeepers, traders and other small-business operators from the Indian subcontinent, those who operate in the physical world of the underclasses.

Zuma noted that “we cannot accept that when there are challenges, we then use violence, particularly to our brothers and sisters from the continent”. ANC treasurer-general Zweli Mkhize reminded South Africans “we are all children of Africa”. The thought lingered that had the 2008 perpetrators been arrested and charged, the xenophobia label would not have been sticking so well. The soothing words would have had gravitas.

By all appearances, the government lacks the will to reverse the influx of foreign citizens. As much as its management is out of control, the problem is likely to have become irreversible.

From a policy perspective, the vexing question is, why does South Africa maintain open borders to citizens from Africa? Is it selective enforcement of both border and immigration control and law enforcement? Is it lack of capacity and ineptitude?

Foreigners get absorbed into the national social-services network while they trade, operate small businesses or, on the darker side of life and alongside many South African counterparts, thrive on crime.

There is a lumpen-proletariat underworld in which life is cheap, and xenophobia is but one expression of the laws of that world.

The government has lost authority over vast tracks of South Africa, over the underworld where xenophobia, looting and parading mobs rule. Research at the time of the 2008 outbreaks pointed to an anarchic world, with its own priorities and competing elusive power structures. From high-level bribes and huge drug deals to usurious microloans and coercive local political systems, it runs parallel to anything official, democratic and constitutionally legitimate.

The small miracle of the week is that concerted action led to the violence and looting being subdued.

This week’s xenophobia was a case of two-sided lawlessness: foreigners unofficially entering and drawing on South African social infrastructure plus lawlessness in terms of seeking real or imagined revenge, looting and killing by a minority substantial enough to earn South Africa scoundrel status around the world.

Lawfulness still has a modest edge over lawlessness in South Africa, even if much of society – middle classes included – often display a wonderfully lawless side.

This lawlessness has roots in the fact that the constitution’s Bill of Rights offers no absolute guarantees. It is a “law” that does not dictate. There follows a legal system that functions at some levels, but often not at all, and a system of policing in which citizens do not trust their “protection officers”.

Or, think of a Human Rights Commission that this week found a little voice again to pronounce on xenophobia but has been largely silent on the personal and systemic devastation that poverty and unemployment wreak in South Africa.

This all unfolds under the watch of a government that proclaims that tolerance of foreign citizens is part of paying back to our continental brothers and sisters for their part in the liberation struggle… forgetting for a moment that neither Zimbabwe nor Somalia helped much; Mozambique and Ethiopia did. This motivation nevertheless helps the ANC prolong the legacy of the liberation struggle, increasingly its predominant lever on legitimacy.

Alternatively, it could very well be a case of the government not having the authority and capacity to correct the situation to ensure that a lawful, law-abiding South Africa takes shape. South Africa’s struggling but comparatively big economy is a capitalist magnet and “informal foreigners” have even become employers of note.

South Africa’s tides of April exposed the extent to which its “battle for economic liberation” unfolds in the firm grip of global economic migration, flights of repression and chaos, and a national government that strains to try to gain control.

* Booysen is professor at the Wits School of Governance.

EXPELLED FOREIGNERS POURING OUT OF NIGERIA By The Associated Press
Published: May 5, 1985

LAGOS, Nigeria, May 4— Thousands of illegal aliens, carrying mattresses, clothing and cooking utensils, poured back across the borders to their homelands today, ordered out by Nigeria’s military rulers.

The foreigners had been attracted to Nigeria in part by an oil boom in the 1970’s, but now the West African nation has deep economic problems and an increasing crime rate, which it attributes in large measure to the immigrants.

On Friday, the Government opened its borders to speed the expulsion of 700,000 foreigners. It was the first time Nigeria’s borders with Benin, Niger, Chad and Cameroon were open since April 1984, when the Government closed them to combat the black market in the country’s ailing currency, the naira.

The aliens, who were ordered out last month, were part of the second wave of foreigners to be forced from Nigeria by the Government in three years.

Reporters at the western border with Benin today said Nigerian customs officials were searching the departing foreigners closely and refusing to let tiem carry out more than the 20 naira, or $17.65, allowed by law. They also said bus drivers were doing a brisk business charging twice the normal fare to carry passengers across the border.

The illegal immigrants were among the millions of West Africans, mostly from Ghana, who flooded into Nigeria in hopes of benefiting from the country’s oil-based economy.

But world demand for oil has waned and the price has dropped, sending Nigeria into a steep economic decline and swelling its foreign debt.

In January 1983, the civilian Government of President Shehu Shagari ordered out about two million foreigners, blaming them for widespread unemployment and crime. Roads to the border were clogged with people carrying personal belongings.

Maj. Gen. Mohammed Buhari overthrew Mr. Shagari in December 1983, and last month the Buhari Government announced it was giving the remaining illegal aliens until May 10 to leave.

But until the Government opened the borders on Friday, only small groups were reported to have left on planes and ships.

The state-controlled Lagos radio reported Friday that Interior Minister Mohammed Magoro had met with ambassadors from neighboring countries whose citizens were affected by the expulsion order. The radio quoted ministry officials as saying foreigners would be driven to the borders in ministry vehicles or allowed to buy airline tickets with Nigerian currency. Ordinarily, foreigners must pay in foreign currency.

Ghanaian officials said about 300,000 of the 700,000 foreigners were migrant workers from Ghana. Officials said 100,000 were from Niger and most of the rest from Chad and Cameroon.

In addition to the attraction of Nigeria’s oil boom, many of the non-Ghanaians came to Nigeria to escape drought and the threat of famine in their home countries.

Source

UPDATE: Another twist. It seems Ghana did the same thing to Nigerians not long before.

Due to major economic concerns, along with the belief that immigrants caused or exacerbated many of the social ills plaguing Ghana and Nigeria respectively, both nations created strict anti-immigration policies. In 1969, Ghana enacted the Aliens Compliance Order, in which hundreds of thousands of immigrants, mostly Nigerian, were expelled from the country. In 1983, Nigeria introduced the Expulsion Order, in which about the government ordered over 2 million immigrants to leave, most of which were Ghanaian.

The rivalry between Nigeria and Ghana all started from here;

“Ghana Must Go”: The History of Ghana’s 1969 Aliens Compliance Order and Nigeria’s 1983 Expulsion Order

Due to major economic concerns, along with the belief that immigrants caused or exacerbated many of the social ills plaguing Ghana and Nigeria respectively, both nations created strict anti-immigration policies.

In 1969, Ghana enacted the Aliens Compliance Order, in which hundreds of thousands of immigrants, mostly Nigerian, were expelled from the country. In 1983, Nigeria introduced the Expulsion Order, in which about the government ordered over 2 million immigrants to leave, most of which were Ghanaian.Summary:In 1957, after Ghana gained independence, many Nigerians began migrating to Ghana. The Convention People’s Party (CPP), which had been originally affiliated with Kwame Nkrumah, had maintained a liberal immigration policy because of the party and government’s pan-Africanist orientation and the want to make Ghana the forefront of African unity. For example, in the 1960 census, immigrants made up 12 percent of the Ghanaian population of 8.4 million people and immigrants from other African countries, particularly Nigeria, constituted 98 percent of the foreign-born population.

The relationship became sour when the influx of immigrants began to shift the demographics of the country, which made people unhappy. The most widespread reason for discontent was economic competition and, also, some Ghanaians blamed immigrants for a wave of crime that occurred in the late 1960s. Thus, under former Ghanaian president Kofi Busia’s Aliens Compliance Order of 1969, Nigerians and other immigrants were forced to leave Ghana. The order required of all foreigners in the country to be in possession of residence permit if they did not already have it or to obtain it within a two-week period. Kofi Busia expelled 20,000 to 500,000 Nigerians in a time period of 14 days to 3 months.

The order angered some West African governments, especially Nigeria, Togo, Benin, Mali, Niger, Ivory Coast and Burkina Faso whose citizens were mostly affected by the expulsion. The 1969 Order also affected Ghana’s image in mainland Africa and the rest of the world.In 1983, the Nigerian government expelled 2 million Africans out of Nigeria.

Ghana was facing severe drought and economic problems, so many Ghanaians were welcomed in the 1970s by Nigeria, which was in the midst of an oil boom and in need of cheap labor. In early 1983, as the oil boom faded and Nigerians needed a group to blame for their economic and social woes, the government enacted the Expulsion Order and up to 700,000 Ghanaians were expelled from Nigeria. However, soon after, Nigerian employers allegedly invited back many deportees because they were unable to fill the vacant positions with domestic labor. Unfortunately, in May 1985, the Nigerian government again ordered an estimated 100,000 Ghanaians to be expelled from Nigeria.

This action further strained relations between the two countries .Analysis:Despite the large scale deportation of immigrants, neither country benefitted much economically from those harsh measures. As can be imagined, much confusion surrounded the actual creation and execution of the Aliens Compliance Orders (1969) and the Expulsion Order (1983) on both sides. Although the orders were technically directed at immigrants without proper documentation, many legal immigrants were forced to leave or pay astronomical bribes in order to stay. Both countries had the right to create more stringent immigration policies, but because of the nature of both orders, they fostered much animosity between the two nations and their relationship has never fully recovered from it.

-BFA

Dont only ask us! Ask yourself too!