Chapter 1: Xenophobia in South Africa

South Africa – Behind and Beyond Xenophobia

Through most of April 2015, the world’s attention was gripped by the xenophobic violence that swept across the rainbow nation, resulting in the deaths of several African migrants. Africans, in particular, were bewildered. Indeed bewilderment surpassed outrage in many instances. Why are our brothers killing us? That was the question on many minds and many lips. Whilst I do not presume to proffer a direct answer to this question I would like, through these pages, to expose some of the structural social and economic conditions of post-Apartheid South Africa, which may indicate the xenophobic violence as the tip of an iceberg of dangerous proportions.

Watching the distressing images of South African youth wielding weapons in the streets and hunting down fellow Africans it is easy to forget how much the country has progressed in many areas since the end of Apartheid. South Africans are quick to boast of having laid the foundations for a “non-racial, non-sexist, united and prosperous South Africa, and for a society based on fundamental human rights, equality and unity in diversity”, as the Medium Term Strategic Framework, 2014-2019 puts it. South Africans have built institutions and developed plans they hope will help achieve their lofty ambition as a nation. They point out, with some justification, that in 20 years, they have gone from an international pariah state to one whose counsel is sought, and often prevails, in the council of nations, be it at the United Nations, the African Union or, within their own backyard, the Southern Africa Development Community (SADC) and Common Market for East and Southern Africa (COMESA), where they are the undisputable champions. South Africa is the “S” in BRICS, an exclusive club of leading emerging powers, the others being Brazil, Russia, India and China. In its development plans, South Africa openly touts its desire to share its expertise with other, less endowed countries in Africa and beyond. South African investments are sprouting all over Africa, and iconic South African brands, from wines to DSTV, supermarkets to fast food chains, can be found all over Africa. Fellow Africans, fleeing economic hardship and poor governance at home, are trooping to the country in droves. This is all very impressive. But the narrative masks another reality.

The Triple Threat: Poverty, Unemployment and Inequality

In the past year, I have had the opportunity to work in South Africa, in a position that enabled me grasp the fundamental problems facing the society and economy. In simple, economic development terms, these can be reduced to three intractable, interrelated problems – poverty, unemployment and inequality. Government officials and economists refer to these problems as the triple threat, or triple challenge. The triple threat is not a mere slogan. The South African Government came to this definition through a deliberate process.

South Africa has a formidable development planning apparatus. The Economic Development Department (EDD) oversees the highly competent and well-respected National Planning Commission (NPC). Like many other institutions in the country, including Statistics South Africa, the Reserve Bank of South Africa, the Independent Electoral Commission (IEC) and the judiciary as a whole, the work it produces is more likely to generate consensus than controversy. Under the aegis of the EDD, the country has since the early 2000s thoroughly analyzed the challenges facing the economy and produced a number of development plans. The most significant among these are the New Growth Path (NGP), launched in 2010, the National Development Plan: Vision for 2030 (NDP), sometimes referred to as Vision 2030 or Agenda 2030, launched in 2013, and the Medium Term Strategic Framework, 2014-2019 (MTSF) conceived as a first-phase implementation tool for the NDP.

The NDP is a particularly impressive document. It is a long-term perspective plan, produced through an innovative process led by the world-renowned economist, Trevor Manuel, Finance Minister during the presidencies of Nelson Mandela and Thabo Mbeki but at the time Minister at the Presidency in charge of economic planning. The National Planning Commission (NPC) produced the NDP, a 480-page tome, which lays out a detailed road map leading to South Africa consolidating its position as a global economic powerhouse by 2030. The composition of the NPC itself was novel and unique. It was conceived as an advisory body consisting of 26 people drawn largely from outside government, chosen for their expertise in key areas. It was given a mandate to be “critical, objective and crosscutting”. Unfettered by the customary timidity of career civil servants, the NPC’s analysis was thorough and rigorous, based on the best available data and knowledge. Through this process, the triple threat of poverty, unemployment and inequality, was confirmed as the key impediment to the country’s development ambitions.

Bantustans and Townships: Dens of Poverty

Now, for a brief look at each of these three challenges. First, poverty: To most casual observers, it would appear incongruous to use the expression “extreme poverty” and South Africa in the same sentence. Many Africans think of South Africa as “our only first world economy”, an Eldorado at a par with the US and Europe, boasting a GDP per capita of $7,000 ($13,000 equivalent in purchasing power parity), whereas most other countries in the region are struggling to attain $1,000. Yet the reality on the ground is different for many South Africans. Severe income deprivation and abject living conditions are the lot of many.

The roots of poverty, like much else in South Africa, can be traced to the legacy of Apartheid. First, poverty is defined by residence. You are more likely to be poor if you live in the former homelands (or Bantustans) or in a township. To recall, the so-called Bantustans were the fictitious nations created by the Apartheid regime inside the territory of the Republic of South Africa and the then South West Africa, now Namibia, as “homelands” for black South Africans. (See distribution map below.) The Bantustans were carved out of the poorest quality land, guaranteed to yield hardly any agricultural produce and generally had no sound economic foundation. Thus, poverty was built into their conception. Not surprisingly, statistics show that poverty rates in the former Bantustans are double those in other rural communities.

Map of Distribution of Bantustans under Apartheid South Africa

Poverty is also concentrated in the townships, designed to house blacks working in nearby white communities. In rural areas, the townships harbored commercial farm workers and their families. In urban communities, townships housed blacks whose services were required to maintain the opulent lifestyle of whites. In mining areas, townships took the form of single-sex dormitories for miners, many of whom were imported from neighboring countries like Swaziland, Lesotho and Mozambique. All townships had one thing in common: they were built a safe distance from the white communities they served. Township life has often been romanticized. Townships were, and still are, ebullient and lively. Artistic creativity thrived there, producing the wonderful music loved throughout the world. The anti-Apartheid struggle also found its genesis there. But life in the townships was hard. Daily, black African workers would sally forth in the morning to work in white neighborhoods, women mainly as housemaids and men to carry out other menial jobs. Before dark, they trekked back to their township homes, where there was no water, electricity or sanitation. But those were the lucky ones; the vast majority of township residents had no jobs at all. The townships bred the typical ills of poverty: violence, disease, substance abuse and alcoholism…

Such living conditions still exist in some townships

Since the end of Apartheid some townships have been dramatically transformed, taking advantage of the Government’s Black Economic Empowerment (BEE) and a township eradication program designed to move millions of township dwellers into decent, low-cost housing. (Each new dwelling offers electricity, water and modern sanitation.) Thus, Soweto (from South West Township) has become a bustling, modern mini-city that attracts tourists in droves because of its storied past. But the success story of Soweto is not repeated everywhere. Millions of township dwellers remain mired in degrading poverty.

Unemployment, Structural Transformation and Growth: A Catch 22 Conundrum

Now, Unemployment: Finding decent work for the black population is a big headache for South African authorities. Officially, the unemployment rate stands at 25 percent. Among young people 15 to 24, it rises to 50 percent. In some former homelands and townships, figures of 75 percent and above have been cited. The Government is fully apprised of the problem. Indeed the New Growth Path, which was formulated in the latter years of President Mbeki’s tenure, focused largely on the unemployment question, setting a target of five million new jobs within 10 years.

Unfortunately, there are not quick fixes. The difficulty in tackling unemployment stems from two main causes: the inherent structure of the economy, and an anemic growth rate. South Africa’s economy is caught in a peculiar structural trap. To paraphrase former President Mbeki, South Africa is a country where the first world and the third co-exist. The factors and processes of production are those of a typical high-income economy whereas a large segment of the population lives in conditions of a low-income economy. Agriculture is highly modernized and commercialized. There is hardly any peasant farming or artisanal fishing, occupations that employ large proportions of the population in most African and other developing countries. Commerce and industry, including mining, are similarly structured, dominated by large corporations that employ modern machinery and production techniques, which exclude those without specialized skills or training.

Unlike most countries in the region, where the informal sector thrives and constitutes a huge absorber of labor, this segment of the economy hardly exists in South Africa: no petty traders, no street hawkers, no galamsey¹ operators, no hole-in-the-wall or kiosk-based tailors, seamstresses and mobile money agents. The NDP estimates that small business employs less than 40 percent of the working population. This compares with nearly 70 percent in the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries and probably over 90 percent in most African countries. The NPD sets a target for small business employment at 90 percent by 2030. There is a general consensus that rapid expansion of the small business sector must drive the economic transformation that South Africa desperately needs. To this end, a new Department of Small Business Development was created after the 2014 elections. The strategies proposed for growing the small business sector include large-scale skills and vocational training and freeing up land for small and medium scale farming. These strategies, if adhered to and implemented, would constitute a step change from the way the authorities have dealt with unemployment in the past.

However, for these projects to materialize and generate decent jobs on a mass scale, the economy must grow at a robust pace. The NDP estimates that, to achieve the agenda 2030 objectives, the economy must sustain an annual growth rate of 6 percent. This is not an overly ambitious target. Many countries in the region have reached or exceeded similar growth rates in recent years. Ethiopia has maintained an average annual growth rate of 11 percent over the past decade. The problem is that South Africa is far from achieving this growth rate. In the early 2000s, growth hovered around 4 percent. However, the country has been slow to recover from the global financial crisis of 2008 and in the past couple of years the economy has struggled to attain even 2 percent. The economy faces a Catch 22 conundrum: it must transform in order to grow; yet it must grow in order to generate the resources needed for transformation. Clearly, bold and creative political decisions are needed to cut through this conundrum.

Inequality: A Color-coded Legacy of Apartheid

Finally, inequality: By many estimates, South Africa is among the most unequal societies in the world, if not the most unequal. The country’s score on the GINI coefficient or index, the UN-endorsed measure of income inequality, is currently 6.9. The NDP aims to reduce this to 6.0. This would still make it among the highest in the world. Inequality in South Africa arises from, and is intertwined with, poverty and unemployment. It is also one of the biggest legacies of Apartheid. Under the system of separate development, inequality was strictly color-coded: whites earned most of the income and owned most of the resources, whilst blacks at the bottom of the social pyramid, earned a pittance and owned almost nothing. In between, coloreds and Asians scraped by.

Unfortunately, the end of Apartheid has not erased inequality. The structural inequalities created and maintained by apartheid still remain. Income inequality has actually worsened since the end of apartheid, although it has begun to de-racialize somewhat due to deliberate pro-black policies introduced by the ANC government.  Approximately 60 percent of the population (mostly blacks) earns less than the equivalent of US$7,000, the official GDP per capita, whereas the top 2.2 percent earns about US$50,000. However, inequality is not only manifest in income figures. It reflects in lifestyles, educational opportunities and attainment, access to decent work, life expectancy, burden of disease and, most glaringly, in housing and human settlements. Despite the best intentions of the NDP, current trends do not portend well. Unless bold measures are taken, inequality might even worsen, with a new twist: an increasing number of blacks, although still a tiny fraction, will join the ranks of the super-rich while the gap with the bottom 10 or 20 percent continues to widen.

Migrants, Easy Prey for a Frustrated Population

The persistent poverty and growing inequality baffle many poor South Africans. They ask themselves: We defeated Apartheid. Our own people now rule us. So, why are our conditions worsening? The Government is fully aware of these rumblings and the political and security risks they pose. Pending the eventual transformation of the economy, it has put in place a generous social protection system to cushion poor South Africans from further deprivation. This includes targeted cash transfers for the vulnerable, including subsidized housing, free healthcare and free basic education for the poor, as well as a universal quota of free basic services (water, electricity and sanitation). Indeed up to 15 percent of the national budget is spent on various benefit, subsidies and grants. Many economists question the long-term sustainability of this costly social protection program. But it is a clear political necessity.

Frustrated and exasperated, many black South Africans, who do not have the tools for deep socio-economic analysis, seek scapegoats. White South Africans (“Apartheid descendants”) continue to be routinely blamed and denigrated. Increasingly though, the focus is shifting to “corrupt politicians”. And the media, still largely controlled by the white establishment, gladly trumpet corruption scandals involving political leaders, of which unfortunately there are many.

African migrants are caught up in this maelstrom of unfulfilled expectations. Migrants make an easy and convenient scapegoat. They are easy to characterize as parasites swarming the country to steal South African jobs and degrade the moral fiber of society. In this regard, the situation in South Africa is no different from what pertains in many parts of the world, where migrants are routinely targeted and blamed for the failings of society or governance. The European Union aims to construct “ring of steel” to prevent African and Middle Eastern refugees and asylum seekers from crossing the Mediterranean Sea. Thousands of would-be immigrants have perished as a result. The Australian authorities have created immigrant-processing centers (modern day concentration camps really) on Christmas, Manus and Nauru islands in the Pacific to keep away asylum seekers and refugees mostly from southern and eastern Asia. A 600-mile fence has been erected on the US-Mexico border ostensibly to protect Americans from drug traffickers and terrorists.

The one crucial difference in the case of South Africa is that the anti-immigrant violence is not cloaked in the façade of democratic debate and deliberation of elected leaders, such as the emergency summit held in Brussels on 23 April to enable European leaders to express their outrage at the criminality of people smugglers and reaffirm their determination to protect their borders. Rather, the machete-wielding mobs in South Africa smack of lawlessness. It is an indictment of a government whose intelligence services failed to anticipate and prevent such an embarrassing show and whose security services failed to deal with the violence in a timely fashion. But perhaps, most of all, it is an indictment of a Government and leadership that have failed to inform and educate their people about the assistance many poor African countries offered, and the sacrifices some endured, to ensure the liberation of their brothers and sisters from the yoke of Apartheid.

A Prayer and a Dream: “We are all African”

Following this latest episode of xenophobic violence I pray for two outcomes in South Africa. First, that the country’s leaders succeed in transforming the society and economy within a generation, so it can become a true regional leader and global player. Secondly, I wish South African leaders to inform and educate their citizens about the role of outsiders, especially Africans, in the anti-Apartheid struggle. The teaching of the struggle cannot be parochial, because the struggle and sacrifices were not. The South African rainbow should not cover only the dozen or so racial and ethnic groups in South Africa. It must span the entire continent. Then South African can be a leader.
Fortunately, many South Africans themselves share this prayer. I end these reflections with an excerpt from the vision statement of the South Africa’s National Development Plan – Vision for 2030, which captures this dream in poetic and uplifting terms.
Who are we? 
We are Africans.
We are an African country.
We are part of our multi-national region.
We are an essential part of our continent. Being Africans, we are acutely aware of the wider world, deeply implicated in our past and present.
That wider world carries some of our inheritance to our experience of being African…
There is nothing more to be said.