The anti-migrant belief sparked the series of violence in the country targeted at aliens especially from Nigeria, Zimbabwe, Somalia and Pakistan.The latest violence broke out two weeks ago and was contained only on Friday after police fired rubber bullets to disperse anti-migrant protesters in the administrative capital, Pretoria.
A survey in 2010 found that 60% of South Africans believed that migrants take jobs. Only 27% believed they created them. Nearly 60% felt that one of the reasons for the xenophobic violence that broke out in 2008 was that migrants were taking jobs from South Africans. This sentiment was echoed in the 2015 xenophobic attacks.
But research indicates that migrant entrepreneurs create jobs for other migrants and South Africans.
A research Mean Streets: Migration, Xenophobia and Informality in SA and published the Southern African Migration Programme, African Centre for Cities and International Development Research Centre showed that migrant entrepreneurs from Somalia, Nigeria and Senegal living in Cape Town employed 96% South Africans.
These findings about job creation were confirmed in the 2014 Southern African Migration Programme survey conducted in Johannesburg and Cape Town. These findings have not yet been published.
Several chapters in a recently published book by the company indicate that migrant entrepreneurs also make other contributions to South Africa’s economy.
Tanya Zack describes micro-retailers in Jeppe in inner city Johannesburg as comprising a “booming agglomeration economy.” She argues that this intense trade is a manifestation of low-end globalisation, where the transnational flows of people and goods are oiled not by high finance but by small amounts of capital and through informal transactions.
Andrew Charman and Leif Petersen outline how migrants have transformed the relatively new township settlement of Ivory Park in Johannesburg. They show that migrants have introduced a diverse range of products, business activities and opportunities, and brought scarce manufacturing skills into the township economy.
Vusilizwe Thebe’s study of the informal transnational movement of remittances and people on the route between Gauteng and the rural hinterlands of Zimbabwe draws attention to gaps in the market that migrants often fill.
Key beneficiaries are poorer consumers who can access cheap goods, often in appropriate quantities, at places and times of day that are convenient. Or they have their niche demands met, such as having money delivered to aOther beneficiaries are South African land lords, who receive cumulatively substantial rentals, and formal business owners. For example, all evidence points to the fact that migrant businesses are sourcing their goods in the formal economy and contribute to the tax base by paying VAT.
President Jacob Zuma on Friday condemned acts of violence by his fellow countrymen against foreigners, particularly Nigerians.
Shops and homes owned by Nigerians were looted and torched over the last two weeks.
Some South Africans branded the properties as brothels and drug dens.
President Zuma condemned the xenophobic unrest, and acknowledged the “destruction of property directed at non-nationals.”
“Residents in some communities blame non-nationals for the escalating crimes especially drug trafficking,” he said in a statement issued by his office.
He added: “Many citizens of other countries living in South Africa are law abiding and contribute to the economy of the country positively.
“It is wrong to brandish all non-nationals as drug dealers or human traffickers.”
A similar xenophobic violence in 2008 left 62 people dead while another in 2015 claimed no fewer than seven lives when gangs hunted down and attacked African immigrants in Johannesburg and the Indian Ocean city of Durban.
The federal government said on Thursday it had summoned South Africa’s top diplomat to register its fears about the violence against immigrants.
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