Migration and Xenophobic Manifestations in South Africa, 2008-2016
Abstract
The aim of this piece was to examine the nature of the relationship between migration, identity and xenophobic manifestations in Africa. While xenophobic manifestations continue to be strongly entrenched in developed countries, increasing incidents have been reported in developing African countries like Ghana, Nigeria, Ivory Coast, Equatorial Guinea, and particularly in South Africa. The past violent outbreaks of xenophobic attacks, which resulted in the deaths of many foreign nationals in South Africa, threaten not only the lives and livelihoods of refugees, asylum seekers, economic migrants and other locally defined ‘outsiders’ including domestic migrants and ethnic minorities, but also the health, education, tourism and economic sectors of our “Rainbow Nation”. The research adopted the Frustration Aggression Theory and the exploratory design as its theoretical framework and research design respectively. It gathered data secondarily, and the data were analysed with the content analysis method. The study showed that xenophobia will continue to undermine the rights of migrants and bedevil efforts to maximise the development potentials of migration in the continent of Africa. It recommended that Government should monitor and report bias-motivated violence against migrants, refugees, asylum seekers, and stateless and internally displaced persons, by maintaining official systems of monitoring and public reporting to provide accurate data for informed policy decisions to combat such violence.
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