NDERITU: Xenophobia, like genocide, begins with name calling
Foreign nationals sit and watch after their shacks were set alight by alleged looters at Marabastad, near the Pretoria Central Business District (CBD) in Pretoria, South Africa on September 2, 2019, during widespread attacks on foreign nationals and looting of their shops. PHOTO | PHILL MAGAKOE | AFP
Has enough been said about Xenophobia in South Africa? No. The troubling attacks spilled over into a new week with one person killed and five others injured.
Xenophobia has been raging for more than a decade. In 2009, South African Andile Mngxitama wrote: “In May 2008, Black-on-Black violence erupted in South African townships. At its aftermath 62 black people were killed, of this 21 were black South Africans. The media, academics, and other public opinion makers called it xenophobia. But what kind of xenophobia is this which targets blacks only? Is xenophobia not the fear and hatred of foreigners? What actually happened here was an outbreak of Negrophobia or Afrophobia — the fear and hatred of black people.”
