Xenophobia: Treat the cause – SA Economy’s apocalyptic horsemen
It's an economic fact that immigrants are good for a country. Much of the biggest economy on earth was built on the sweat of millions who streamed through Ellis Island. Academic studies show immigrants added at least half a percentage point to the US's annual growth over more than half a century. But an influx of foreigners into a State where there's economic mismanagement becomes combustible. When jobs are destroyed, those affected will lash out at the softest targets. And in South Africa, hard working immigrants from extremely disadvantaged backgrounds are the easiest of these when xenophobia takes hold. The Developmental State experiment has visited us with the Eskom disaster. The ANC's Cadre Deployment has appointed SOE leadership qualified by party loyalty rather than competence. And the most inflexible labour laws on earth have caused massive job losses and capital flight. Rather than another speech and convincing the inappropriately named Zulu King to back down from idiotic utterings, President Jacob Zuma needs to show leadership. An avowed Christian, he could consider praying for courage to dismount those three apocalyptic horsemen of the SA economy. That would start to treat the cause of all this misery. – Alec Hogg
By Dinky Mkhize
Around 200 protesters, shouting that they wanted immigrants to leave, had pelted passing vehicles and police with rocks in an eastern suburb of the country's biggest commercial city, triggering the show of force.
POROUS BORDERS
Zuma also said the government was taking steps to secure its porous borders and making progress in setting up a Border Management Agency, announced last year and scheduled to be up and running in 2016.
Only a few blocks away, however, fresh skirmishes broke out between foreign nationals, locals and police.
The violence may also be fanning anti-South African sentiment abroad.
Separately, an industry source said Mozambican employees at a sub-contractor for mining group Vale had become "hostile" to South Africans working on the Moatize project in that country but there had been no violence.
It was not clear if the incident occurred at the coal mine or the railway part of the project and Vale officials declined to comment.
South Africa, with a population of about 50 million, is home to an estimated 5 million immigrants, from African countries including Somalia, Ethiopia, Zimbabwe and Malawi, and from further afield, includingChina and Pakistan. Many own shops or sell wares as informal hawkers on street corners or in markets.
Periodic outbreaks of anti-immigrant violence have been blamed on high unemployment, officially around 25 percent although economists say in reality much higher, widespread poverty and glaring income disparities.