This chapter has argued that South Africa is not xenophobic contrary to media and some scholars' opinions. It has been shown that xenophobia is not only about hatred to foreign nationals but that foreign nationals collude with national ones in forming rival groups to compete for economic gains. This dispels the theory that the country is xenophobic since hatred and fear are not easy to measure. It also offered that contrary to the theory that migration gives rise to xenophobia with movements of the people crossing borders, the real cause of migration in this case is underdevelopment that followed the occupation of the continent by the European countries. The borders they imposed were designed to divide and rule the continent, and Africa must resolve the border issue, the land issue; teach the history of the continent; and hold festivals with SADC countries to show the unity of the continent. The African Union should have a permanent agenda issue on the unity of the continent.
TopIntroduction And Background To The Chapter
While the world view is that South Africa is a xenophobic country, this chapter argues on the contrary. It further argues that the phenomenon of xenophobia is a foreign manifestation in Africa. Despite the denial by Gouch (2017) that the Brexit was motivated by xenophobia and racism, the fact that it was based on resistance to further net immigration due to that it would put more pressure on jobs, housing and public services suggested that the country was xenophobic behind the curtain. The United Kingdom led the race to colonise Africa thus creating xenophobia when they unleashed artificial borders to separate Africans. It is these artificial borders that have created the impression among the Africans that they are different because of the written down borders which spiritually de-linked the same people. The United Kingdom in 2016 has passed a referendum to withdraw from the European Union (EU) in what is famously known as Brexit. The constitution of the European Union provides that individual members do not strictly control their borders by the EU and this angered the UK. Somai and Biedermann (2016) posit that the rise in the immigrant-native ratio has had a significant impact on employee’s pay level in certain areas, therefore pro-Brexit campaigners featured migration as one of the major problems arising from EU membership. Similarly, Lovas-Osuna et al. (2019) argue that Brexit was driven by immigration even though it risked brain drain in the country. On the contrary, Gouch (2017) posited that Brexit was not caused by xenophobia and racism but further the net immigration was a threat to jobs, housing and public service (Gouch, 2017). Goodwin (2017) confirmed that the EU migrants were attracted to migrate to the UK because of the low rate of unemployment. While the immigrants were not welcome in the UK, there was nothing the country could do since they were a member of the EU and then sought any means that could do away with this arrangement. As Goodwin (2017) puts it:
anxieties about the perceived effects of migration on public services, welfare, and identity were further cultivated by a strident and populist tabloid press, which routinely opposed immigration
Ironically the media that is quick to apportion blame to South Africa for being xenophobic, supported the UK and carried in their front-page stories blaming the EU migrants for social ills, and demanding action to control their numbers in the European Union countries (Goodwin, 2017). Pro-Brexit “Leave” campaigns focused heavily on immigration and this was in sync with the core concerns of voters. Two Prime Ministers, David Cameron and Theresa May lost their jobs in the 2016 and 2019 respectively on the Brexit saga (Woolfson, 2017; Russell, 2020). This paper argues that Western countries and their media are not the best options for Africans to resolve the problem of xenophobia as they also are still battling their own, and with the hypocrisy mentioned earlier, the xenophobia problem in Africa – not at least in South Africa is nowhere near being resolved from the West. African countries are capable of resolving issues of xenophobia in the same way as they were capable of finding peace in the Great Lakes region in Rwanda and Burundi for example. For a fact, events on immigrants in most European regions have indeed proven that the world is yet to find a lasting solution for associational problems to immigration. For example, in the UK, Boris Johnson who promised to drag the UK from the EU and also had wanted a mandate to do so was elected and then withdrew the country out of the EU. Matthijs and Toenshoff (2019) opine that the pro-leave coalition suggestively wanted to impose the UK’s imperial image in European politics, if not global politics. One thing they upheld was regularization of immigration.
The UK’s pro-leave group was expressing the attitude of fear and hatred against those who were in the country because they regarded them as threats to job opportunities as Goodwin (2017). While in the UK migrants were attracted by low unemployment, in Africa migrants are motivated by underdevelopment caused by the European colonialism that followed the 1884-1885 Berlin Conference (Michalopoulos & Papaioannou, 2017). This conclusion is supported by Schmeidl (2014) who argues that underdevelopment and a deteriorating economic situation particularly in rural areas forced the people to move to other countries. Rodney (1973) in “How Europe Underdeveloped Africa” argues that the continent was rendered poor by the European occupation of Africa and the slave trade that took millions of Africans across the TransAtlantic to go and work there as slaves.