Afrophobia in South Africa is a problem. When poor black people fight poor black people somebody with a lot of power benefits from it. This is a truth that South Africa does not want to face. Afrophobia in South Africa did not start in 2008. The violence that happened in the townships that year was not created overnight. It was built up over centuries of colonialism, people being forced off their land, and a system of capitalism that is based on racism. To understand why people blame migrants for things like unemployment, drugs and crime we need to understand how South Africas economy works.
South Africa was built on labour from migrants. From the 1800s South African companies needed cheap labour to work in the mines. The European colonisers (British) found out that South Africa possessed diamonds in Kimberley in 1867 and gold on the Witwatersrand in 1886, which changed the region into a place where people went to work. Mining companies brought in workers from all over Southern Africa including places like Mozambique, Lesotho, Malawi and Zimbabwe. This was facilitated by what later became known as the Witwatersrand Native Labour Association (WNLA). According to the African History Archive and other studies on labour, the system of migrant labour was designed to keep workers away from their families and communities, and to pay them very low wages.
The Native Land Act of 1913 cemented and made it more rigid and institutionalised so that black South Africans could only live on 7% of the country's land. This forced millions of people to have to work for wages. This system did not bring workers together. Instead it divided them. Different groups of people were housed in segregated areas and employers used this to their advantage to weaken the workers and prevent them from coming together to fight for their rights. In other words, the system of capitalism in South Africa was designed to make black workers compete against each other.
The violence that happened in 2008 was not the beginning of the problem. It was the point when things exploded. In May 2008 there was a lot of violence against foreigners in South Africa and 60 people were killed. Thousands of people were forced to leave their homes. The world was shocked by the violence. The problems that led to it had been around for decades. There were people without jobs, not enough houses, and services that were not working well or being delivered. South Africa is still one of the most unequal societies in the world. According to the World Bank, the difference between rich and poor in South Africa is one of the biggest in the world. In 2008, unemployment was starting to become stubborn, and when things are this bad people get angry, and look for someone to blame. Instead of blaming the people in power, the corporations, and the corrupt system, many communities turned against migrants who were also poor and vulnerable. This is how the people in power stay in control, and continue to accumulate wealth.
The idea that foreigners are taking jobs is not true. Research by the African Centre for Migration & Society at Wits University has shown that migrants make up a negligible percentage of the population in South Africa (3.9%), and they mostly work in informal or unstable jobs. Many studies have also shown that when migrants start their businesses they create jobs and help the local economy. The main reasons for unemployment are things like companies leaving the country due to corruption or loss of market or any other excuse that the capitalist investor will come up with, machines replacing workers, corruption and a system that is unfair. It is not the migrants who are selling vegetables or running shops.
The claim that foreigners bring drugs is also not true. Organized crime in South Africa is deeply connected to the country’s politics and economy. Recent investigations have shown that local people, corrupt officials, businesspeople and law enforcement are all involved in the drug trade. Poor migrants are often the face of the street-level economy but they are not usually the ones in control of the criminal activity. The people who really benefit from crime are often hidden and are the ones with the most power. The system of capitalism creates economies that are driven by profit, and the underworld also operates on the same principles but in a vile, raw, and unfiltered manner.
The Marikana massacre in 2012 changed South African politics forever. When 34 mineworkers were killed by the police during a strike many black working-class South Africans realised that the government and the corporations were still in control. Marikana showed that the alliance between the government, the corporations and the police was still strong. It also showed that the government was still willing to use violence to protect the interests of the corporations. Out of this moment, the Economic Freedom Fighters was formed in 2013. The party positioned itself as a response to the economic inequality, the colonial theft of land, unemployment, and the power of the corporations. Whether or not you agree with their methods, the party was successful in making social justice a major part of the national conversation. It is no wonder that the capitalist machinery has invested major resources to decampaign the EFF, and render them the face of illegal immigration. This is done by deliberately misinterpreting the EFF’s posture on Immigration.
This misinterpretation is peddled with the intention of making it seem like the EFF espouses a free for all bonanza arrangement as far as immigration. Which is why they invest time in demonising the internationalist and humanist posture of paragraph 107 - 109. This distortion exposes their inherent anti-working class and anti-poor posture, because the question of immigration in its broad sense and the flow of immigration follows the logic of capitalist patterns of production, and the relations thereof. People migrate to South Africa because the industries which are labour intensive are found in South Africa. They come here whether they have documentation or not because of the design of the system which I touched on when I delved into the foundations of our economy. Therefore, we can conclude that the Afrophobic movements are all funded by the evil hand of White Monopoly Capital, and the Zionist elite, which has invested time, money, and resources in ensuring South Africa is balkanised into small pro-Western ethno states due to among other things, our government’s solidarity to Palestine. Which is why they also don't hesitate to take swipes at the EFF, and its Commander-In-Chief, Julius Malema because of the vehement and stubborn insistence that Afrophobia is a by-product of self-hate and aids the coloniser rather than free the oppressed.
In the final analysis, we see that the attack on the EFF is a continuation of the politics that gripped the 70s, 80s, and 90s when the masses of our people were rendering Apartheid South Africa ungovernable, and capitalism unworkable. These are the politics of divide and conquer. They do this by using a familiar face who happens to demonise and distort the crisis on ground by reducing it to African migrants, who, by the way, are sucked in by the design of the SADC economy, and the broader African economy. They build movements and use some sections of the media to provide a megaphone of hate to propel this message of division and diversion. Social media bots are amplified to make the message seem widespread, and resources are pumped in to ensure the wheels of hate are greased. At the end of the day, the capitalist continues to profit, while the working class continue being exploited.
Afrophobia ultimately helps the people in power. When the working class is divided it cannot fight against the corporations, corruption and the system that is unfair. When South Africans and African migrants fight each other in the townships the billionaires are not affected. That is why real liberation politics must reject both the system of capitalism and the idea of nationalism that is based on hatred. African workers have enemies: poverty, exploitation, unemployment and inequality. The future of South Africa depends on rebuilding solidarity among the working class across nationality, language and ethnicity. Because history has shown us what happens when desperation is turned into hatred: the poor fight each other. The powerful get richer.
