South Africa�s great failure

by Editor · Published July 1, 2009 · Updated March 6, 2012

South Africa rightly aspires to be a nation in which respect for and the elevation of human rights are a primary principle. Our Constitution shines internationally as a beacon of how the modern state ought to protect the people within its borders, and beyond. It is thus with a sense of shame that we learn of South Africa�s disgraceful ranking as one of the world�s seven worst countries for refugees to live in.

The 2009 World Refugee Survey ranks South Africa alongside Gaza, where internal discord is greatly aggravated by Israel�s bombing campaigns which have made no distinction between �enemy combatants� and civilians.

For refugees in South Africa, life is not good but filled with fear and alienation. The orgy of violence against non-South Africans in May 2008 certainly helped propel South Africa into the top 7 of refugee-unfriendly countries. We are fooling ourselves, however, if we think that the terrible events of last year were an aberration.

Xenophobia still runs through our society; foreign nationals are exposed to discrimination every day � by individuals and by public services � and the government has mostly dragged its heels in responding to the problem. According to newspaper reports, in many places taxi drivers are extorting �protection money� from immigrant shopkeepers.

The violence, sometimes lethal, against non-South Africans continues. Recurring news stories this year about people being burnt alive � Zimbabweans, Somalis, Ethiopians, Congolese � should outrage the entire nation. Just as shocking as the brutality inflicted upon these poor people is our collective indifference.

We should be enraged that the incidence of xenophobia is spreading, not diminishing, 14 years after the Southern African Catholic Bishops� Conference warned: �There is no doubt that there is a very high level of xenophobia in our country�One of the main problems is that a variety of people have been lumped together under the title of �illegal immigrants�, and the whole situation of demonising immigrants is feeding the xenophobia phenomenon.�

How can a nation led by people who once were exiles themselves � whose president was a refugee � be so callous towards those who escaped bitter hardship in their country?

The uMkhonto weSizwe Military Veterans’ Association� � an organisation of former exiles � has admirably condemned xenophobic attacks and called for solidarity with fellow �oppressed Africans from other countries�. It is in this respect that its energies would be deployed to greater effect than in threatening to undermine democratically elected leadership.

Likewise, Christians cannot remain untouched by the scandalous treatment of refugees in South Africa. How can we forget that even the Holy Family were at one point refugees (in Egypt, which today joins South Africa in the top 7 of refugee-hostile countries)? Early Christians escaped persecution by finding refuge in other countries.

The Old Testament repeatedly and emphatically counsels us to embrace refugees (especially Leviticus 19:34, 24:22, and Numbers 15:16). In Matthew�s gospel, Jesus makes it plain that we are to offer hospitality to strangers: ��anything you did for one of my brothers here, however humble, you did for me� (25:31-46).

South Africans would do well to compare their attitudes to scriptural injunctions and plain human rights with the actions of Brazil, which resettled more than 100 Palestinians who fled Iraq, and moreover removed the word �refugee� from their work permits to �prevent confusion on the part of employers that had blocked employment of some refugees�, according to the World Refugee Survey. The South American country did so despite having no cultural, political, religious or geographical ties to Iraqi Palestinians.

In South Africa, refugees are almost exclusively fellow Africans. It is contemptible that we cannot offer them a safe shelter.