After the party, the hangover: Xenophobic violence & post-World Cup South Africa

With just one game remaining of this first ever African World Cup, the impending sense of doom in South Africa is already beginning to kick in.

“When we wake up on Monday, July 12, 2010 will be over,” writes Reuters journalist Mpho Majoro. “The hangover from the last month will still be fresh on our national psyche, the visitors will be leaving our shores, and it will be all over. No more 2010. How are we to cope? How do we begin to live without 2010?”

Naturally, after the world’s biggest party, South Africa can expect with it one of the world’s biggest hangovers. 2010, as South Africans call their World Cup, has been six years in the making. People have been looking forward to this month for over half a decade, no small amount of time for anticipation. Associated feelings of post-event emptiness are therefore inevitable. For South Africa and it’s residents even more so, simply because the World Cup is such a defining event in the country’s storied history.

But while a key cornerstone central to making South Africa’s first World Cup such a wonderful and amiable place to be was undoubtedly the enthusiasm and overwhelming friendliness of the South African people, growing fears over an impending switch in national mood post-tournament provide serious cause for concern.

As the world’s visitors pack up their vuvuzelas and head home on June 12th, the nation’s foreign nationals remain, fearful of an uprising of xenophobic violence similar in force to the May 2008 riots that left 62 people dead and more than 100,000 displaced.

Xenophobic violence

South Africa has long had a tense relationship with it’s population of refugees and migrants. In a nation with a complex history of xenophobia and deeply-ingrained institutionalised racism, foreign nationals are just another part of the dichotomy of mistrust, fear and at times violence based along perceived lines of division.

In the first five months of 2010, at least 11 incidents of xenophobic violence were reported in South Africa, involving violent attacks and lootings of shops belonging to, in particular, Somali and Ethiopian nationals. As rumours of further post-World Cup attacks persist, a culture of fear is being whipped up strong enough to make many foreign nationals frightened for their safety. Such fears led to scenes in Cape Town last week, as some 200 Zimbabwean nationals, “some with items of furniture,” camped on the outskirts looking for lifts out of the country.

As the Mail and Guardian write:

Foreign nationals report that they are being openly threatened not just on the streets and at the taxi ranks but also — and more worryingly — by public servants such as nurses and police officers. They tell how they have been evicted, after their landlords have been threatened and told to “get rid of the makwerekwere“.

Many report that they have been fired from restaurants and construction sites after their employers were told that hiring foreigners would identify them and their property as “legitimate targets” when attacks begin afresh. Somali people are selling their shops in the townships and moving into the city, and reports from the Musina border post indicate that Zimbabweans are sending their moveable property home.

According to an Amnesty International report before the World Cup began, competition for jobs and housing are amongst the reasons given for this sustained tension and hostility.

This violence has often been linked to public protests over corruption and failures of local government to deliver basic services in poor neighbourhoods.

Migrants and refugees are perceived by some as competing for jobs, housing and economic opportunities, and become targets of violence during the protests. However xenophobic attitudes also fuel the violence and appear to underlie the local police failure to respond swiftly or, in a few cases, to connive with the perpetrators of the violence.  Access to justice and compensation for the victims has also proven very difficult.

Last week a Zimbabwean man was left in hospital after being thrown off a train in an alleged xenophobic attack, and the situation may only get worse once the glare of the world’s spotlight fades away after Monday. “Threats [have been] made to refugees and migrants that, “after the World Cup” they will be driven out again from their neighbourhoods or the country,” say Amnesty International.

Migration and fear

Discrimination and xenophobia, unfortunately, are just a fact of life in South Africa, part of the country’s history and identity that far outdates even the vuvuzela itself. Recent research by the Gauteng City Region Observatory found that 69% of residents have xenophobic attitudes, with no significant differences between the various race, class and other groupings.

According to the most recent Census in 2001, immigrants make up 2.3% of South Africa’s 43.7 million population, with a 2009 government statistics study indicating that between 2006 and 2011, the Gauteng and Western Cape provinces can expect a net inflow of 590,000 migrants alone. In 2008, Statistics South Africa estimated the number of undocumented migrants to be in the 500,000 to 1 million range.

In some respects, the South African government’s stance on immigration since the end of apartheid can be interpreted as mirroring the deep suspicions of much of the country’s population. As Jonathan Crush wrote in a study on Policy and Xenophobia in 2008,

“Contrary to the predictions of many, no massive brain drain to South Africa from elsewhere on the continent took place [after apartheid]. Most commentators attribute the fall to the highly restrictionist immigration policy the South African government adopted after the fall of apartheid.

Since there was no obvious economic logic to this stance, many have seen it as the response of a new postapartheid nationalism that viewed all foreign citizens as outsiders and a threat to South African citizens’ economic prospects.”

That last sentence seems to embody the current prevailing mood that has led to fears of further violence post-World Cup. “Such attacks,” writes Franz Krueger, “are part of our daily reality. They have become as much a part of the South African way of life as braaivleis or chiskop.”

May 2008 attacks

In May 2008, attacks by locals on migrants from Malawi, Zimbabwe and Mozambique in the Johannesburg township of Alexandra led to a sustained, nationwide period of xenophobic violence, leaving 62 dead.

The attacks were widely condemned, including by The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, but over a year later 33% of the 469 criminal cases were still yet to go to trial, leaving perpetrators unpunished. A far cry from the swift justice of the special World Cup courts, created to deal with comparative trivialities like pick-pocketing or “ambush marketing”.

In fairness, police in the Western Cape have been quick to respond to fresh rumours of xenophobic violence, and have re-established a safety forum set up following the outbreak of violence in 2008. Whether that is enough to calm the concerns of genuinely frightened foreign nationals remains to be seen.

The World Cup has brought South Africans a unique cross-cultural, international experience, full of genuine warmth and spirit, whilst also reinforcing pan-African unity by way of Ghana’s run to the quarter finals. Hopefully, the wave of goodwill created by 2010 helps override the potential for xenophobic violence once the party ends on June 12th.

As Krueger writes, “It may be time to look past the vuvuzelas and flags, and remember that the fundamental issues facing the country have not disappeared.”

(photo via -Eric on Flickr)

Politics and Society, South Africa, World Cup 2010