LETTER: Frustration is driving attacks on foreigners, not xenophobia
I am concerned that we are trying to address something that we incorrectly call xenophobia — and because we have misnamed it, we are probably using the wrong tools to address it. In so doing, we are putting lives at risk both now and in the future. My thinking is this: xenophobia describes something that is about hate of another large group, or fear of that group, often describing the other to be an entire population. It seems to me, however, that the targets of our "xenophobic" violence are actually economic competitors, and not simply the "other". Our people are seeing strangers arrive as immigrants and refugees, and setting themselves up in economically sound lives and viable businesses. I suspect that our people are, to some extent, jealous of this. If they express any fear, it is fear of losing their own opportunities to the "other", and not fear of the "other" as a person. Let’s go back for a moment to times when other refugees arrived in SA; for example the late 1800s, when J...
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