Supporters of the anti-illegal immigration organisation March and March and foreign nationals in a confrontation outside Durban’s Diakonia Centre on May 21. Some might say that the terribly destructive violence of the past few weeks shows that the chickens have come home to roost.
DEEP down in our crisis-ridden society the political forces behind the unprecedented violent anti-immigrant national protests have been steadily germinating over a long period.
It is the socio-material context of arguably the worst Black poverty, unemployment and social inequalities in the post-apartheid period which was the catalyst that ignited those combustible protests across the length and breadth of South Africa.
It is this context which many commentators and analysts in the media have unfortunately not paid sufficient attention to in dealing with the migrant worker crisis. But it is only through such an approach that we can understand the conditions which gave rise to the unprecedented destructive violence, which often descended into sheer mob hysteria, with the terrible opportunistic looting of shops owned by foreigners.
This widespread orgy of wanton violence, the intensity of which has never been seen before since our watershed 1994 Uhuru nonracial and democratic elections, is the most poignant reminder that we are in fact facing a mortal and multifaceted crisis now fiercely demanding immediate government action and answers.
