The persistent violence against and social exclusion of foreign nationals in South Africa needed to be re-evaluated as it was a threat to democracy and human rights, said a panel of experts at the Institute for Security Studies’ fourth international conference on national and international perspectives on crime reduction and criminal justice on Thursday. 

The panelists called for a policy shift and the gradual move towards the protection of asylum seekers and the need to respect the rights of refugees.

They included University of the Witwatersrand Professor of Anthropology David Coplan, African Centre for Migration and Society researcher Jean Pierre Misago, Jesuit Refugee Service researcher Samson Ogunyemi, and South African Human Rights Commissioner Dr Danny Titus.

Each acknowledged that the position the country currently took with respect to refugees’ and migrants’ issues contradicted its principles, while the country’s responses and interventions around these issue was inadequate.

Despite several task team interventions and dialogues by government and civil society following the systematic attacks targeted at foreign nationals in 2008, South Africa still faces significant policy challenges in preventing the reoccurance of such violent events, notwithstanding historical, social and economic inequalities, that are not unique to the South African context.

Negative attitudes with regard to “otherness” and “blackness” in respect of both migrants and refugees have emerged as a significant factor causing tension and conflict.

Misago noted that the lack of sustained will by government; denialism by saying the root of violence is merely crime; and impunity and lack of accountability, particularly by the police, impeded progress towards a systematic understanding of the nature of xenophobic violence.

He further asserted that an unexpected impact of the response was that it unknowingly supported the intentions of perpetrators who wanted foreigners removed from their communities. This was compounded by the fact that evaluation of relief programmes never appropriately evaluated responses of what was working from what was not.

Ogunyemi concurred by saying that South Africa had forgotten that it was lauded internationally because it has a human rights consciousness that is safeguarded by its Constitution, with refugees being treated as “pests rather than guests” in the country.  

"Refugees should enjoy the same rights as every South African, besides the right to vote,” he said, adding that refugees needed protection and care.

Oguyemi also said that although the country had signed conventions and treaties, the main mandate of which was to protect and defend vulnerable refugees and asylum seekers, it failed to follow them because its citizens were not adequately informed. 

"The politicisation of numbers by the media, who use it for their own merit, and their failure to report the drop in the number of immigrants in South Africa, exacerbates the proliferation of myths and misconceptions,” he lamented. 

The panel concluded by acknowledging that the government needed to be more accountable; increase its political will; provide increased access to social services and sanitation; prevent discrimination and exclusion of foreign nationals; provide special care for children and the terminally ill; as well as prevent human trafficking, rape and gender-based violence in conflict situations.