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JOHANNESBURG,
Aug 6 (IPS) - For its history of discrimination, one would have
expected post-apartheid South Africa to have been a society more
tolerant of migrants. Instead, it has become one of Africa's more
xenophobic countries where attacks on foreigners have become so
commonplace that they barely afford a mention on the media.
Yet
this contemporary history of South African discrimination is unlikely
to receive much attention when the UN World Conference on Racism
gets underway in South Africa, Aug 31-Sep 7.
Analysts
say the government is focusing on racism and the lingering legacy
of apartheid in the country. It should receive more attention at
the conference, believes Jenny Parsley of the Human Rights Commission.
"You cannot have an African Renaissance when you don't like
Africans," she says, in reference to the African Renaissance
philosophy which South Africa's president Thabo Mbeki has made a
foundation stone of his Presidency.
As
apartheid borders came down, the numbers of African migrants in
South Africa increased notably in its major cities. Immigration
has always been common -- from the sixties, South Africa's white
government encouraged immigration from Britain and Europe. Almost
one in ten-white citizens was not born here, while one in four South
Africans has a British passport.
Immigrants
from the rest of the continent are recent, but common visitors.
Ironically, black migrants face the worst xenophobia.
By
the time of the 1996 census, statistics showed that there were almost
530,000 Southern African Development Community (SADC) residents
living in South Africa, with another 20,000 from the rest of the
continent. More than half are migrant workers employed in the mines
-- an historical workforce.
The
rest arrived more recently and work as professionals or are largely
self-employed. Instead of viewing foreigners as a job-creating resource
(surveys show immigrant populations are highly skilled and entrepreneurial)
they have been met with hostility.
Since
the early nineties, there have been ongoing accounts of local hawkers
undertaking running battles with street salesperson from Taiwan,
India, Pakistan and Bangladesh.
The
hostility is not confined to the private sector - while there is
no statistical evidence, incidents of police harassment of illegal
immigrants is common. At the Johannesburg Central police station,
a special immigrant patrol unit goes out every afternoon to find
the ''illegal'' or ''makwerekwere'' as migrants are pejoratively
referred to.
When
analysts try to understand why xenophobia has spread like wildfire,
it becomes clear that South Africans believe foreigners ''steal''
their jobs and sap up state services.
The
economy has lost a net number of 1.1 million jobs in the past six
years, leading to an unemployment rate of over 35 percent and a
constantly poverty level of half of all households, according to
official statistics.
''There's
a perception that 'We've waited so long that we won't share the
limited scraps being thrown at us','' says Parsley.
She
adds that countries that are internally divided inevitably display
higher levels of xenophobia. On top of that, South Africa's racial
reconciliation process has stalled, resulting in what she calls
''hierarchies of otherness''.
But
David McDonald of the South Africa Migration Project (SAMP) says
that often the fears that fuel xenophobia have no basis in reality.
Most migrants enter the country legally and do not plan to stay
forever; they find the quality of life better in their own countries;
and instead of being a drain on the economy, many in fact lend to
the economy by doing their retailing locally.
''Cross
border migration from the region is already a very legal and regularised
process and lends itself to the building of a more humane, management-oriented
approach to immigration policy,'' he says, adding that the South
African government needs to do a lot more to expand human rights
protection to migrants.
It
also needs to develop a more sophisticated migration framework that
takes account of the economic and social linkages in the Southern
African region. On the ground, there is a need for public education.
The
Human Rights Commission (HRC) has run a two-year long ''Roll Back
Xenophobia'' campaign that includes media education. Research by
the SAMP last year found that the media was disseminating many of
the myths about migrants. Parsley says that while it is difficult
to measure attitude change, the public debate on migrants is changing.
In
addition to the media campaign, the HRC also runs face-to-face meetings
where local communities get to interact with representatives of
refugee and immigrant communities. ''When you get to meet someone
personally, they often do not conform to the stereotypes,'' she
says.(END/IPS/AF/HD/FK/MN/01)
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