ALEX - The New Frontier!

[duncan drennan]

Yet another fact-a-day,

69% of urban South Africans agree with the statement 'Immigrants are a threat to jobs for South Africans, they should not be allowed into the country.' (FutureFact 2006)

[Dave A]

So Thabo has authorised military deployment now

As violent xenophobic clashes that have claimed at least 42 lives spread from Gauteng to Mpumalanga and KwaZulu-Natal, President Thabo Mbeki on Wednesday gave the go-ahead for the "involvement" of the military.

"[Mbeki] has approved a request from the South African Police Service [SAPS] for the involvement of the South African National Defence Force [SANDF] in stopping ongoing attacks on foreign nationals in Gauteng province," his office said in a statement.

SANDF and SAPS operations members were in a planning session on Wednesday night on when to deploy, said Director Sally de Beer, spokesperson in the office of the police national commissioner.

Defence Ministry spokesperson Sam Mkhwanazi said there would be a military presence in the strife-hit areas "as soon as all that needs to be done is complete".
full story from M&G here

Play time is over by the looks of things.

[duncan drennan]

"Because we believe there are forces in this country and outside who continue to refuse to accept that we are capable as a people to rule and govern ourselves, that we are capable as Africans to set an agenda that seeks to uplift our people from the shackle of poverty visited upon us by the colonial past."

I find this statement very disturbing. It is just too much of an echo of things we've heard from up north.

There are also plenty of other disturbing things in the full article (worth a read) on M&G online.

[Dave A]

Spoken from a "they're out to get us" mindset by the looks of things. I'm leaning towards it being driven by opportunistic rabble rousers rather than a concerted plot.

I tend to agree with this, though:

He said there were challenges in service delivery, and corruption, especially in the allocation of housing.

Part of the reason people took it out on foreigners was that they discovered that though they were on a waiting list for a home, a foreigner who had taken advantage of corruption in the system might be renting out as many as four homes.

"Because people sometimes do not find channels to raise their complaints, they resort to [violence]."

It is the root powder keg that has been tapped into. And gov needs to accept their responsibility for those conditions being there.

[Dave A]

I had a quiet moment to chat to my ground floor grapevine today. And here's the word according to them:

The issue is about the employment of illegal immigrants who are prepared to work for substantially less than the locals. The "immigrant owned" enterprises being attacked are employing fellow immigrants (mostly illegal and thus vulnerable to exploitation) instead of South Africans. This very cheap labour not only denies employment opportunities for the locals, it is allowing these enterprises to undercut SA local enterprises, causing even more unemployment and hardship for the locals. The immigrant owners are still prospering quite nicely in the middle of all this, so we can add envy/jealousy to the mix.

Now that sounds like a perfectly plausible cause to me.

[duncan drennan]

Now that sounds like a perfectly plausible cause to me.

I would have guessed something along those lines, except I have not thought about the possibility of illegal businesses hiring illegal immigrants and exploiting them. Something else that I did think of is that a lot of these immigrants seem to have a relatively high level of education. Put a highly educated business owner up against an uneducated one and most times the educated guy is going to come out on top.

Or maybe these guys are just better business owners, and if you can't beat 'em, well....beat 'em.

[Dave A]

It would seem that this violence is giving gov serious food for thought.

Two weeks of anti-foreigner violence in South Africa have highlighted the growing disconnect between a public impatient for change and a governing party that claims a divine right to rule.

Although there is little prospect of the African National Congress (ANC) losing next year's elections due to South Africa's almost one-party democracy, genuine signs of anger among the bedrock support of the black urban poor have emerged during the crisis in which 56 people have died.

Even ANC president Jacob Zuma, known for possessing a common touch notably absent in head of state Thabo Mbeki, received a nasty jolt on a visit to one of the affected areas last weekend.
full story from M&G here

At least that special task team seems to have got on with things.

The recent xenophobic violence cannot be attributed to a single factor and is not necessarily the work of a so-called "third force", government spokesperson Themba Maseko said on Thursday.

Briefing the media following Wednesday's regular Cabinet meeting, he said the Cabinet had received a report from the special task team probing the issue, and the violence could not be attributed to a single cause.

Rather, it was the result of a complex set of factors.
full story from M&G here

I guess we can say there isn't one single cause, as long as we discount bad management

It does seem to be an accumulation of issues. But I wonder how much longer the ANC is going to be able to duck their responsibility in that.

[duncan drennan]

It does seem to be an accumulation of issues. But I wonder how much longer the ANC is going to be able to duck their responsibility in that.

Using some (un)common sense we can probably name most of those issues,

• Unemployment
• Poor service delivery
• Large quantities of people crossing the border illegally
• Poor handling of regional issues (i.e. Zimbabwe)
• Education and skills training (qualified foreigners competing with unqualified locals)
• Problematic home affairs department
• Restrictive labour legislation (which I believe reduces employment opportunities - Dave has raised this a couple of times). This also makes it "desirable" to hire illegal foreigners who can't fall back on the law over legal residents.
• Mismanagement of public funds (due to both corruption and lack of skills)

I really believe that the government is trying to fix these things (let's not turn this into a bash the gov thread), but they are issues that need to faced up to. Unfortunately there is a tendency to blame "third forces" rather than look in the mirror a bit.

Time to get your head out of the sand Mr President.

[Dave A]

I'd add pursuing conflicting priorities, poor planning, poor implementation, lack of foresight, intolerance to other ideas, bureaucracy, but that is quite a list already.