Xenophobia must be recognised as a hate crime - speech in Parliament

Speech by Toby Chance MP

Report of the Ad Hoc Joint Committee on Probing Violence against Foreign Nationals

25^th November 2015

"Xenophobia must be recognised as a hate crime"

Honourable Members, this report is a curate’s egg – good in parts but in others it leaves a lot to be desired.

The Committee was unanimous in attributing the main causes of the violence against foreign nationals between January and May this year to socio-economic factors and wanton criminality. But it failed to attribute much of the violent incidents to xenophobic prejudice.

It is a fact that competition for scarce resources in our townships, cities and rural areas, is intense. Jobs are hard to come by and immigrants invariably are more willing to accept lower wages and longer working hours than locals.

The foreign-run or owned spaza shops targeted by criminals, meanwhile, were victims of their own success.

They are successful because of their smart business practices. They tap into sophisticated supply and distribution networks using bulk buying to force down prices, shutting out local spaza shop owners.

The Committee found that Illegal practices are widespread, but these are allowed, even encouraged, by corrupt officials who turn a blind eye in return for a stuffed brown envelope.

Resentment, envy and pent up anger led to the foreign-owned spaza shops being targeted.

Johnny Steinberg, in his book A Man of Good Hope, gives a succinct account of the motivations driving these immigrant shopkeepers even in the face of sometimes horrific prejudice and violence: I quote:

“They come neither with weapons not with the protection of citizenship. There may be a police force, but it does not bother to answer their calls. Nor do they come with pretences or with artful stories. They do not want to make friends. They do not want to make South Africa their home. They want to make money. And that is what they do. Night and day. Without rest.” Close quote.

Some South African spaza shopkeepers believe that before the immigrants arrived in their neighbourhoods, and malls began mushrooming, they had no competition. This ignores the fact that they were competing with themselves. Such existence, protected from outside competition but alienated from the mainstream economy, is the pernicious legacy of apartheid.

They have been slow to respond, but are showing signs of adapting their business practices to better compete with the immigrants and malls.

Honourable Members, on Friday I got a call from an enterprising young woman, Kgaugelo Lebipi, who is training 400 spaza shop owners in Tshwane townships on how to compete more effectively.

This is what is needed, not the forced ejection of immigrants or the imposition of anti-competitive regulations to keep them out. Our focus should be expanding economic opportunity through small business growth and learning from each other about how to be successful.

A level playing field for all, compliance with local bylaws and policing of illicit and counterfeit goods are essential. After that, the market and fair competition will determine the winners and losers.

Within the committee, there were many disagreements over terminology. 

A majority, for a time, preferred the term “non-nationals” instead of “foreign nationals”, which they believed would be less offensive. This reveals an exclusionary mentality which denies a person’s right to an identity. It does not recognise immigrants’ legitimate reality of being from another country. Some might be illegal, but they are here and have rights.

This denial of identity, creating so-called non-persons, goes to the heart of the discussion around the presence or absence of xenophobia in our society. What is a “non-national”, after all?

Unless we face up to the fact that xenophobia exists in South Africa, we can never root it out. This is why defining xenophobia as a hate crime is so important, and I commend the Department of Justice for crafting legislation which takes us in this direction.

Here the Committee missed an opportunity. In its penultimate sitting, my colleague the Honourable Motau and I strongly urged the Committee to retain the recommendation on hate crimes.

But no. The ANC majority decided to remove it.

This an insult to the organisations that took the trouble to make submissions, including Sonke Gender Justice, the Southern African Litigation Centre and the Consortium for Refugees and Migrants in South Africa, CORMSA.

More importantly, it is an insult to the victims of hate crimes themselves.

As CORMSA pointed out in its written submission, and I quote: “The absence of such legislation makes it very difficult to find statistics on hate crimes, such as xenophobic violence, as incidents are recorded as murder, looting, assault etc but without reference to the motivation - why certain individuals are targeted.”

We are left with a report which refuses to recognise xenophobia as a crime. If it’s not a crime, it doesn’t exist, right? Wrong!

The report of the Inter-ministerial Committee on Migration, presented to our Committee by Minister in the Presidency the Honourable Jeff Radebe, was frank and revealing.

Government has admitted that South Africa is now home to between 5 and 6 million immigrants, of which up to 50% are here illegally.

The wave of immigration has steepened since 2008, when the last outbreak of xenophobic violence occurred. Through its own failure to control our borders, government has compounded the problem, placing even more pressure on host communities.

Had government implemented the recommendations of Parliament’s 20008 report, the pressure would have been mitigated.

Our borders would have been tightened up, preventing millions of illegal immigrants from gaining entry; police would have been more sensitive to immigrants’ grievances; home affairs would have issued asylum documents and permits more timeously; more effort would have been put into a national campaign on social cohesion, recognising the rights and responsibilities of immigrants and their host communities.

Honourable Members, South Africa is bearing the brunt of mass immigration from distressed regions of the world, particularly Africa. Most asylum seekers and economic migrants coming here genuinely seek a better life of freedom, fairness and opportunity.

We must liberalise our immigration policies, making it easier for highly skilled migrants to get in without having to resort to the asylum-seeker route, while shutting the door on millions more low-skilled migrants who will put further pressure on our limited resources.

Government must not repeat the mistake it made in 2008 and shelve this latest report. Parliament must ensure its recommendations are taken seriously and acted upon.

South Africa deserves nothing less.