Economic Xenophobia: A Stain On South Africa’s Landscape

Mzwandile Jacks VENTURES AFRICA

Signs of xenophobia seriously blemish South Africa’s landscape, but its execution is particularly stubborn in Gauteng, South Africa’s economic heartland.

The reason for this is that South Africa’s economic heartland is currently facing an emergence of a fierce struggle for scarce resources among township dwellers. The skirmish in the townships is between residents and Somali and Pakistani small business people.

Somalis and Pakistanis, whose pockets are lined with enough money to start small businesses, have seen that Gauteng townships offer huge business opportunities they can tap into.

They have indeed successfully exploited the market. Big business only realised these opportunities a few years back and decided to move in with the construction of huge shopping centres in the townships. This has not only strangled the small, moribund township tuck shop owner, who has used his/her retrenchment package to start this business. This has actually marginalised them.

Therein lies the rub. The poor South African tuck shop owner does not understand how Somalis and Pakistanis are making it during these tough economic conditions. This could have led to looting of shops owned by foreign nationals this week in Soweto, South Africa’s biggest township.
The looting broke out in Doornkop following the shooting of a teenage boy and spread overnight to Emdeni, Zola and Protea Glen on Wednesday.

According to Eye Witness News (EWN), these attacks happened after a Somali shop owner allegedly shot a 14-year-old on Monday after he and a group of youngsters attempted to rob his shop. Young township people always know the challenges facing older people.

Soweto police spokesman, Kay Makhubela, said several people were arrested following these attacks. “The community members are also saying the foreign shop owners must move out from the area so they’ve been looting their properties. We’ve maintained the situation and managed to arrest some of the suspects.”

Soweto is not the only place Somalis and Pakistanis have had to face violence. They were chucked out of the Vaal and Pretoria townships early last year and the year before.

It’s not just that black township dwellers have this instinctive hatred for people from other parts of the world.
It’s also not that township dwellers have this penchant for violence against foreigners, particularly the business savvy Somalis and Pakistanis.

The real perversion by way of modern South African conditions is that the majority of township dwellers in Gauteng – like black people nationally – feel marginalized economically. But it is absurd to blame foreigners for this because this is the legacy of apartheid, which the current ruling party seems to have ignored.

Township dwellers have been shocked when people from other parts of the globe come into their areas and run successful businesses when they (township dwellers) struggle to do anything. They feel this is the real looting of the money from their areas.

And the government is not doing anything to help them, they claim. They find it hard to get money from the government’s development finance institutions, they add. But when they hear some commentators and politicians call for a stop to illegal looting, most township dwellers wonder why do these people care? Why should any township dweller care about the tuck shops owned by foreigners? Or care about the business life of a community which allegedly enters South Africa illegally with forged passports.

In addition, it’s not like the Somali and Pakistani shops for instance provide jobs to them and are helpful to their living in any way, they claim.

Will looting resolve any of this? Hell no! And let’s face it: concern for the lives of these foreigners is what’s bringing the police in, not the big-picture concerns about the legal looting of human lives, one Soweto resident told Ventures Africa.