If a country like South Africa were nurturing a precisely defined international reputation, something like Nike, Microsoft or Cheerios, its brand managers seem to have been taking something of a nap – or off on a very extended coffee break while things were falling apart around them. Now there seem to be subtle signs of some incipient panic within official South Africa in response to the most recent outbreaks of the looting, robbing, killing and miscellaneous mayhem over the past several weeks – a wave of violent xenophobia.

Earlier this week, within less than a day, even as it seemed the scale of the current violence was receding, the government went from totally dismissing calls for the use of the country’s military to bolster the police in efforts to restore and maintain civil order – to dispatching units of that very same SANDF to serve as some backbone for law and order efforts. Now the army would be a “force multiplier”, in the new gutsy language of the defence minister, to backstop some pretty aggressive police raids on single men’s hostels in Johannesburg.

A few days earlier, just minutes before the president was due to board his aircraft to fly off to a celebratory meeting in Indonesia of heads of state to commemorate the birth of the Non-Aligned Movement in Bandung, Indonesia sixty years ago, he abruptly cancelled his trip, sent the deputy president instead, and then finally broke a near-silence on the urban mayhem – but blamed the media for the damage to the nation’s reputation. And then, after a thoroughly jarring speech by Zulu King Goodwill Zwelithini in which he had likened immigrants from other African nations to lice (a felicitous turn of phrase that some argue helped provoke the violence in the first case), the king was wheeled out again to offer a rather more moderate view on African immigrants in a second public gathering.

He did, however, also add a rather less-than-salutary grace note of an implied threat – something on the order of saying that if he had really wanted such people to be gone from South Africa’s shores, all he really had to do was lift a metaphorical finger to make it so and his people would take care of things forthwith. As a result of all these messages, there has been an increasing litany of international concern (and not a little despairing tongue clicking) about South Africa’s seemingly unstoppable, recurring bouts of xenophobia. International television channels from Beijing to Atlanta have glommed onto this problem with news reports and discussions, and some particularly ghastly photos of an actual killing in Alexandra township were published or broadcast all around the world as well. The net effect of all of this has helped provoke angry reactions against South Africa throughout the rest of the continent.

In the midst of this, at a briefing to give foreign print, radio and television correspondents some insights and background, two immigrants’ rights advocates – Marc Gbaffou, Chairman of the African Diaspora Forum and Blessing Vava, Human Rights Activist – and Democratic Republic of Congo Ambassador to South Africa (the dean of the diplomatic corps from the African continent) Bene M’Poko offered their views on the South African situation. Somewhat astonishingly, the South African government ended up ignoring the event – and a chance to make its case clearly to the world. Small Business Minister Lindiwe Zulu had first agreed to participate, but after her schedule changed, no alternative representative became available. Deputy Secretary General of the ANC Jessie Duarte participated, but she insisted she only represented her party – and not the government it has formed.

In her opening comments, Duarte argued her party had asked its local branches to organise public forums to discuss the xenophobia issue, insisting ANC policy was to integrate immigrants into local communities, rather than segregate them in something like refugee camps. Still, she admitted the government (or was it the party, that got a bit confusing every once in a while) had stumbled in its handling of refugees entering the country, and acknowledging it is impossible to turn off the flow of people. Nevertheless, she added that when immigrants come to South Africa and look for jobs, that movement of people helps breed the tension that gives rise to the ill feeling between people. She insisted immigrants who don’t join unions also contribute to the building up of tensions.

Turning to the present moment, Duarte argued her party’s concern now was that a criminal element was exploiting things, and that some of the consequent looting has just been “simple criminality”. To help offset such problems in future, she was counting on priests to preach to common humanity in a sustained program of outreach. Okay, might help a bit.

For his part, the DRC ambassador noted that as a fellow African, what had happened recently in this country was sad for the South Africa, for the Southern Africa community, and for the continent as a whole. The continent had joined together to vanquish colonialism and had cooperated on ending Apartheid. But it seems South Africa’s problems with xenophobia are deep-rooted, and they have just needed a triggering event, as in 2008 and now in 2015 as well. With that as prologue, he asked whether or not the country had the capacity to deal with such disruptions when they erupt yet again – as they almost certainly will.

A paradox for South Africa, he noted, was that this anti-foreigner activity had been occurring even as this country had been helping lead the drive for SADC integration. Still, South Africa needed to take some serious pro-active steps to ensure such problems do not reoccur in the future. Unless the underlying social and economic issues are addressed, there may well be a next time, he worried. That is pretty blunt talk for an ambassador.

In his comments, meanwhile, Marc Gbaffou, Chairman of the African Diaspora Forum, described how, in the wake of the 2008 events, his group had gone into various townships to work with schools to communicate information about Africa – beyond South Africa. Because they had done so much outreach in Alexandra, for example, he and his group were especially startled when violence happened there. Gbaffou argued that education, education and still more education was crucial to preventing yet more eruptions of xenophobic violence.

But beyond that, there was a critical need for South Africans to embrace migration as a way of growing their country’s economy. Immigrants contribute by working hard, hiring more employees, and investing in expansion. The irony is that South Africa’s problem of poverty is not unique – but the poor in other nations do not generally engage in similar outbursts of xenophobic rage, despite their poverty.

For his part, Blessing Vava insisted there was a need for a straightforward condemnation of these xenophobic attacks (including any statements by people like the Zulu king), and arresting the perpetrators of the violence, rather than simply getting the violence to cease. He was adamant that since so many economic migrants into South Africa from Zimbabwe have been fleeing the failed economic policies of the Mugabe regime, and because the South African government has shied away from any criticism of that neighbouring government, South Africa was effectively complicit in the flow of migrants southward, rather than simply its recipient.

In response to questions from the audience, Duarte argued that the new use of the army was simply to assist the police, that dockets from the 2008 violence would be reopened and that, yes, there was clearly a need to address long-term solutions.

Meanwhile, Ambassador M’Poko added that among the resident diplomatic community, he and his fellow ambassadors had kept wondering where South Africa’s riot police were when the trouble got out of control. Is there actually sufficient emergency preparedness in South Africa, he asked, rhetorically.

In response to further questioning, while Jessie Duarte admitted she didn’t know if there really was a so-called “third force”, she did insist that the attacks seemed to be well organised, as they moved from KwaZulu-Natal. Why were there no attacks in Sandton, she asked.

As the questions kept coming, the Congolese ambassador put down a subtle marker for the future that just may possibly have been a way of putting South Africa on notice about its sluggishness in taking real steps to contain the xenophobic virus. He noted politely that South Africa would be hosting the AU leaders’ summit in early June – and it would be a great shame if some leaders boycotted the upcoming summit in protest.

As journalists pushed on, the ANC deputy secretary general admitted that South Africa really had no firm, accurate statistics on the number of immigrants (legal ones or those without the proper papers) actually in South Africa – or the amount of taxes they pay. In response to the criticisms heard earlier of South African policy that were contributing to the flood of immigrants, Duarte insisted South Africa does not criticise the domestic policies of a neighbouring country like Zimbabwe. In any case, she insisted that external actors are bullish on South Africa’s prospects, as was the case with a delegation of Goldman Sachs executives she had met just the other day.

Meanwhile, Gbaffou argued there was a crushing need for education of South Africans about the reality of the life and impact of immigrants. Or, as he said, “migrants are creating jobs. But, a burnt spaza shop is a destroyed job”.

What was curious in all of this was a failure on the part of South Africa to embrace this opportunity to put its circumstances, policies and plans clearly to an audience of interested, and largely sympathetic, international media. South Africa’s problems are similar to those of Europe in the face of a growing wave of desperate, would-be immigrants, fleeing the chaos of North African and Middle Eastern states, or that of America in dealing with the continuing stream of Central Americans trying to get away from drug and crime-related violence. Parallels of both problems and difficulties in dealing with them could have been cited, but they were not.

Moreover, in thinking about the broader impact of immigration on South African politics, it seems something of a puzzle that, given the scarcity of jobs in South Africa for many citizens looking for work, no political party has – not yet at least – seized the populist banner of anti-immigration policies or, at the minimum, stricter controls on immigration in the manner of so many angry populist political parties such as Britain’s UKIP or France’s National Front. Is it reasonable to suspect that in future elections a party like the Economic Freedom Fighters will decide to embrace – as a potentially winning strategy – advocacy of more stringent controls over immigration in order to gain the support of a hard-pressed working class or unemployed frustrated voters? DM

Photo: Smoke rises from a burned vehicle as local South Africans stand in the morning light after they attacked and burned vehicles and buildings in the area after another night of xenophobia-related violence in downtown, Johannesburg, South Africa, 17 April 2015. South Africa said it will deploy its army in areas of the commercial capital, Johannesburg, after the deaths of at least seven people in xenophobic violence during the past two weeks. EPA/KIM LUDBROOK.