Politicians should take the rap for attacks on immigrants
Are SA politicians dismayed when people are hostile to immigrants because they hate competition? Last week, there was a common SA event: citizens attacking immigrants.
This time, the violence was caused by claims that immigrant shop owners were selling goods that had passed their expiry date or were counterfeit. For not the first time, an issue that is really about the exploitation of the poor became an excuse to turn on immigrants.
Officials condemned the violence and commentators earnestly discussed why the poor take out their anger on people who were not born here, migrants from elsewhere in Africa in particular.
This is a common reaction to what is, sadly, a common event. Violence against immigrants is far more widespread than news reports suggest, and when it does come to light the reaction always assumes that politicians and other polite people know how to treat people from elsewhere in a “civilised” way, but township and shack settlement residents do not.
This is a buck-passing exercise. A key reason why immigrants face violence is that people take seriously what politicians say about them. Researchers have been arguing for years that official policy and much of what politicians say about immigrants paints them as a threat to South Africans’ well-being. Citizens who attack immigrants are, therefore, taking to its logical conclusion what politicians tell them.
Despite this, politicians continue to send messages into the world branding immigrants a threat. Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University researcher Savo Heleta shows that political parties vie with each other to paint immigrants as a problem. The 2017 white paper on international migration is fairly sympathetic to skilled and rich migrants but sees poor immigrants, mostly from Africa, as threats to SA’s safety and prosperity.
ANC, DA and other opposition politicians join the chorus. COPE leader Mosiuoa Lekota, who wants immigrants confined to camps, and Joburg mayor Herman Mashaba, who blames foreigners for just about everything, take extreme positions. But their hostility to immigrants is shared by much of the political class and reflected in official policy.
The politicians may claim they are simply reflecting what citizens think about immigrants. But by continually labelling them, they make it more likely that people will blame them when harmful products turn up in shops — or anything else goes wrong. Politicians have a duty to do what voters want, but they are also obliged to inform citizens accurately about the problems they face. In this case, the politicians and officials are regularly misinforming people.
Research shows that migrants do not steal jobs; they are more likely to create them. Immigrants tend to be more hard-working and focused on improving their lot than other people. SA crime researchers have grudgingly conceded that there is no evidence that crime rates are higher among immigrants. They pay taxes and so are entitled to use public services, and claims that they do so in a way that deprives South Africans are usually urban legends.
As growing economies elsewhere found, immigrants, including those who are working their way up and so lack formal skills, contribute far more to economies than they extract. Countries are more likely to get rich by attracting migrants than by driving them away. If politicians told citizens this, they would be helping to reduce violence against immigrants and ensuring the country deals with problems, such as dumping products on the poor, rather than blaming them on immigrants.
They would be doing what democratic politicians should do — telling voters the truth.
Friedman is research professor with the humanities faculty of the University of Johannesburg.