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Globalisation, immigration and hate

Bo Mbindwane is a business executive with experience in mining and other sectors. He has past experience in public administration and is an indepedent mining analyst. On twitter: @mbindwane

What obligations do states have towards immigrants? What are international ethics on the assistance for necessitous immigrants? As the Mediterranean Sea becomes an African tomb, just as the Atlantic was during the slave trade, political office election contests are becoming sharply focused on globalised immigration.

The Roma people come from Bulgaria and Romania. Since time immemorial, they have experienced severe xenophobia and racism in Europe. In a Spring 2014 Global Attitudes Survey by the Pew Research Center, it was found that 85 percent of Italians viewed the Roma (known more pejoratively as Gypsies) unfavourably, with 66 percent of French, 53 percent of Greeks, 50 percent of the British, 49 percent of Polish, 42 percent of Germans and 41 percent of Spanish citizens all having xenophobic views of the Roma.

French citizens of African descent drove a violent uprising between 2007 and 2010, protesting over internal xenophobia against them, which has left them as second-class citizens. French politics has since been charged with anti-immigration undertones. In Italy, the first black female Cabinet minister, Congo-born Cécile Kyenge, insisted she would not be deterred from her plans for integrating immigrants into society after she received repeated xenophobic and racist abuse.

In many football matches across Europe, racism and xenophobia against African players is a normal feature, with bananas thrown at them in a gesture of hate.

Western governments are now seeing immigration as a global problem, requiring tackling through regional trade blocs.

The moral duty of governments towards necessitous immigrants is seen as charity and not as a duty in law, a duty in good moral behaviour and advancement of international human rights. Moral good, duty in law and human rights are now seen within the scope of economic abilities of the countries concerned. If Italy says it cannot afford to send a rescue mission on its seas for boats that are in distress, the moral and legal obligation is excused. Some key nations resolved to bomb out any vessels they suspected as likely to be bringing in immigrants. 

In his Leviathan writings in 1651, Philosopher Thomas Hobbes argued that “people who cannot earn a living in their home countries have a right to emigrate, and such countries they choose to migrate to have an obligation to allow them in”. Hobbes qualified this, saying the right to migrate should be a given “provided that the countries they [migrants] choose are not sufficiently inhabited”. Space, and not cost, was top of mind for Hobbes.

This school of thought dates back to 1651, when globalisation was still a dream. Seven billion people did not inhabit earth, which now is causing strain. The World Wars had not shaped people and developed natural enemies and tribes. The modern nation states had not developed to what they are today.

The idea of borderless continents, or in particular a borderless Africa, finds itself in Hobbes’ philosophy, which is narrow in definition yet wide in scope, as no country, even the USA, could absorb all immigrants due to economics alone; even though space is plentiful. Hobbes also seemed not to see colonialisation of a special kind, wherein a country like Namibia could be expected to receive three million immigrants, making Namibian natives a minority in their own country.

Indeed some countries and peoples value their kind and their way of life intrinsically. This too is always guarded jealously by nations that fear cultural dilution or dominance.

In 2013, Israel brutally evicted many African immigrants from the ‘holy’ land after various xenophobic attacks. The current Australian government is openly xenophobic and there have been many xenophobic clashes in Arab-dominated towns in Australia. To deal with the influx of immigrants, the Australian navy has standing orders to aggressively push off any vessel entering its waters, with deadly consequences. Prime Minister Tony Abbot offered Europe advice last week on how to tackle necessitous immigrants.

Immigration by refugees of war is protected under International Law, Convention on Civil and Political Rights, Article 12 and Article 13 (2) of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, conversely stating that the right to enter one country does not guarantee mass influx of any kind of refugees.

South Africa is currently on a charm offensive to refugees and immigrants who have suffered attacks or fear of attacks by mobs inside the country. Whilst this is laudable, politicians should not appear to be infringing upon the immigrants’ right to return or to be sent back to their home country.

As South Africa discusses the plight of refugees and immigrants, it is important to note that these are two different sets of people. The 1951 Convention relating to the Status of Refugees defines a refugee as a person who “owing to a well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social or political group, is outside of [their] country of nationality”.

This description fits in with what the likes of Azapo, BCM, ANC, PAC and others suffered under the Apartheid government and their presence in the continent. 

With global warming and water scarcity, the definition of a refugee will need to be amended to include forced migration due to circumstances beyond choice but necessitous for stranded, stateless or ecologically challenged persons. Likewise, economic hardships immigration is not regarded as a moral issue for host nations, nor is it protected under international law. These are the gaps the UN Conventions and AU in its ‘African Refugee Convention’ should look at addressing, with a strong balance between perceived abilities of host nations and real scope. 

When Nigeria and others decry xenophobic violence in South Africa, and in doing so point to Nigeria’s assistance offered to a few hundred South Africans during Apartheid, they seem to claim that Nigeria has bona fide refugees or necessitous immigrants as residents in South Africa just as the members of Apartheid liberation movements were. Whilst this cry seems to be shared by most affected African states, no one has asked why their natives are escaping their birth countries to seek a better life elsewhere. On the other hand, liberation movements were not seeking a better life in these countries, but were seeking shelter from brutal persecution under UN and AU obligations. 

During Apartheid, Lesotho, Tanzania and Botswana generally allowed free movement, but by and large, most host countries kept South African exiles in camps and often under very strict rules. Some of these nations expelled exiles at short notice. The Nkomati Accord saw President Samora Machel expel the ANC, just a few hundred people. In the Nkomati Accord, signed on 16 March 1984 with South African President PW Botha, both countries resolved not to harbour hostile forces or allow their countries to be used as launching pads for attacks on one another.

The sacrifices made by frontline states in harbouring South African exiles was enormous and economically costly too, in terms of trade with South Africa. The question of South African exiles was accepted as a non-permanent affair which in any event benefited host countries, as countries like Russia, Sweden, and others gave more financial and other aid to countries that hosted South African liberation movements, and in particular the ANC, after having been regarded as a legitimate government of the people by a number of countries.

South Africa’s influx borders may be perpetuating the suffering and human rights abuses in the continent, as there is no visible effort to fight many of the woes that see migrants choosing terrible and difficult lives in South Africa rather than the nightmares in their birth countries. These extend to internal xenophobia, homophobia, female genital mutilations, forced marriages, kidnap child marriages, albino murders, political persecutions, economic oppression and bad governance.

Influx borders and South Africa’s perceived moral duty would also create problematic ex-ante incentives on the continent sisters not to manage themselves efficiently.

Indeed South Africa is able to make topical issues such as corruption, to the extent that a stranger may indeed believe corruption is out of hand where it is essentially not; however, the necessary noise shows the outrage South Africans see corruption to be. In South Africa, you can insult any leader, including the president, and certainly the courts work. These freedoms are not easily found across Africa’s other nations. The shame that South Africans carry over the xenophobic attacks is loud and burdensome.

International law’s primacy obliges governments to first and foremost manage occurrences within their borders. Sister states have failed their people and are now projecting their failures onto South Africa in very dubious demands, for example: “We helped you when you were illegally persecuted, now it’s your turn”. Sovereign nations are not obliged to attend to matters occurring outside their borders or in foreign countries. The first obligation is to the citizens and residents. Is offering “economic refugee status” to immigrants an act of sovereign interference by the ANC?

Whilst the inherently xenophilic ANC has come out in full force in ‘distributive justice’ to protect the human rights of those suffering xenophobic attacks, it must not neglect the by-products of any actions taken. These could include a mass influx of immigrants due to a favourable atmosphere; interference on nations’ domestic matters by encouraging refugee influx and migrant skilled or unskilled labour into South Africa. Mass influx will not produce peace, but conflict over resources, with criminals and less successful traders using hate as a business too again.

The doctrine of ‘distributive justice’ under this ANC administration is different to the presidents Mbeki and Mandela’s administrations, in that for the first time the term “xenophobia” is used by government, and denials are scrapped from policy. Both aforementioned presidents had maintained that it was impossible for black South Africans to be xenophobic. President Zuma’s narrative is that a few mobs have shown signs of xenophobia. 

Distributive justice as a policy perspective, according to Aristotle, is rooted in ‘equality’. Justice is framed as distributable or distributive, as we have heard from President Jacob Zuma’s anti-xenophobic speeches. The emphasis is on the preamble of the Freedom Charter and Constitution: “South Africa belongs to all who live in it…” This speaks to distributive justice and sharing. It claims equal rights for citizens and accepted immigrants. It demands sacrifice, right to dignity, and welfare.

I have previously argued that to understand President Zuma, one must first understand him as he is; a ‘communitarian politician’. Distributive justice comes as a natural cause in communitarianism.

Whilst the European states hate the Roma and the Roma refuse to be integrated into an entangled European community, their community fails the test of acceptance. Likewise, if Somali and Ethiopian refugees create ghettos in Mayfair, Johannesburg; or Nigerians overrun Hillbrow to an extent that South Africans can’t enter those communities, where their unique laws and mini states within a state are formed, the South African community will struggle to accept them into society.

Xenophobia is not only an act by a host, but immigrants too are capable of being xenophobic towards host people. The exclusionary ghettos and lifestyles breed mistrust and fears. Incidents of xenophobia by immigrants against their own hosts have been reported, including the Soweto killing of a 13-year-old boy, Simphiwe Mahori, by a Somali immigrant early this year. This act of xenophobia, the killing of a host child, led to sporadic violence against many immigrants businesses.

Campaigns against xenophobia, if not inclusive, will not succeed, and at best will create dual hatred underground as racism has. Both hosts and immigrants are capable of exhibiting prejudiced attitudes, and more work on integration and abolishment of Somali ghettos and the like are needed. Many migrants arrive and stay as they were in their native lands, not even learning to speak English, as they have their own schools, churches, mosques, laws, etc. 

President Zuma cannot ignore the need for a department of government that must be totally focused on integration. Integration of the South Africans themselves who have had centuries of division, plus the added demands of integrating immigrants into society. This cannot be handled by a Home Affairs or another department, as it is a full study on its own, and has economic merit needing economic policy too. Racism and xenophobia will not evaporate; tribalism or ethnic divisions remain at high temperature in the entire country, with the statue debate being a recent sign of strain.

As normal South Africans and civil society take to the streets to demonstrate their xenophilia, taking selfies, an immigration policy that does not contain immigrants learning about the host nation and global affairs as a compulsory class of passage, only breeds ghettos; and different peoples in a country will continue to breed hate and fear due to the distance between people. Equally, what the president announced in terms of AU flags and AU anthem during his State of the Nation Address in February must be pushed and implemented speedily.

South Africa should take to the G20 summit in Turkey the issue of global immigration as a key part of the agenda. DM

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