Imani Khumalo, a recent graduate of a university in Johannesburg, South Africa, still remembers the shock she felt during a Philosophy class in her second year.
Students were asked by the lecturer to give their opinion on whether the immigration law in South Africa should be more stringent. Imani felt her heart quiver as one of her classmates spoke up: “Laws should be stricter. All foreigners come here illegally to steal our jobs.” Imani, who asked a pseudonym to be used for personal reasons, couldn’t speak up against him. “I was afraid that people were going to gang up on me if I did.”
As a ‘foreigner’ born and raised in Tanzania, it was natural for Imani to feel this way. And this was not the first time for her to encounter racist and xenophobic hatred. “Oh my god, you’re from Tanzania? Go back to your country!” Imani recalls a time when a peer in her high school shouted to her face. However, a case like Imani’s is only a tip of the iceberg when it comes to illustrating the recent rise of xenophobia in South Africa - a country once hailed for overcoming legalized racial discrimination known as apartheid in 1994.
According to the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, xenophobic violence and discrimination have recently increased in South Africa, including under the banner of “Operation Dudula”, originally an online campaign which has “become an umbrella for mobilisation of violent protests, vigilante violence, arson targeting migrant-owned homes and businesses, and even the murder of foreign nationals.”
In mid-July this year, a group of UN experts including Ms E. Tendayi Achiume, Special Rapporteur on contemporary forms of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance, that “perpetrators enjoy widespread impunity for xenophobic rhetoric and violence, leading to a lack of accountability for serious human rights violations and the flourishing of racist and xenophobic political platforms.”
What is notable is that the recent wave of xenophobia is not mainly targeted at the “whites” – who had enjoyed privilege over Black South Africans in the apartheid era. Rather, hatred is now going towards foreign nationals and migrants from other parts of the African continent. When xenophobic violence erupted in Johannesburg in 2008, it rapidly spread to other provinces and resulted in 62 deaths, including 21 South Africans, in addition to 11 Mozambicans, five Zimbabweans and three Somalis, , a non-governmental organization. Migrants from such neighbouring countries have come under increased scrutiny, leading to baseless claims that the migrants have come to “steal our jobs”.
In a country where regulations to counter xenophobia are limited, academia has played a key role in responding to cases of xenophobic violence and discrimination. One such initiative is Xenowatch, an online platform managed by the University of the Witwatersrand, a UNAI member institution in Johannesburg. The initiative, fully launched in 2018, works to monitor xenophobic threats and attacks on people and property across South Africa.
One flagship project is indicating where, and how many, incidents and deaths have occurred in the country due to xenophobic violence. The dashboard tells us that since 1994, there have been 952 total incidents in the country, which have led to 123,760 displacements, 4,849 shops looted and 644 total deaths, as of 4 August 2022.
This kind of statistics is especially valuable in South Africa, where regulators do not collect nor publish official data on the number of incidents caused by xenophobia. In addition to media reports, Xenowatch receives direct information from victims or their families to tally the numbers. The platform manages a hotline on WhatsApp, a widely used social networking service, to which an individual can report an incident.
“Most foreign nationals, especially living in densely populated areas, have become accustomed to the xenophobic violence and discrimination. For the sake of surviving and avoiding any serious casualties, foreign nationals are finding ways to navigate living in those spaces because it has become a reality that they cannot avoid in most cases,” says Ms. Silindile Nanzile Mlilo, Xenowatch Project Manager and Research Fellow at the University of the Witwatersrand. The objective of Xenowatch is to serve as an early warning platform, sharing data with law enforcement and partners in civil society to support their advocacy work concerning xenophobia in South Africa.
Concrete impact is yet to be seen, but the initiative’s efforts may soon bear fruit. There have been multiple cases in recent years where data collected by Xenowatch have been shared with non-governmental organizations with a view to lobbying or sending a letter to parliamentarians. A stricter law against xenophobia would likely contribute to a safer environment for foreign nationals.
In 2021, the United Nations marked the 20th anniversary of the Durban Declaration and Programme of Action (DDPA) on countering racism, intolerance and discrimination. Despite developments made across the globe, we are far from their total eradication. That is why it is critical for us to look back to , which called on academia institutions “to promote research, exchange experiences and successful practices and develop promotional activities in this area”.
