South Africa is one of the most violent countries in the world, especially towards immigrants.
Despite South Africa's recent wealth and economic success, immigrants from Somalia and elsewhere looking for opportunity in the country have little chance of attaining success and comfort.
These immigrants, who are unable to find work in South Africa's formal economy, often live in informal settlements rife with structural xenophobia, thereby creating highly violent and combustible conditions.
Daily news coverage in South Africa includes horrific crimes against women and children. One recent such incident involved two women, one 82 and the other 21, who were gang-raped and brutally hacked to death. The ubiquitous rape of women and children in South Africa led Interpol to designate the country as the "rape capital of the world". In 2009, 28 percent of men in South Africa admitted to committing rape.
But South Africa's violence is not limited to rape. As we approach the 20-year anniversary of the fall of apartheid, South Africa remains one of the most violent societies in the world. A video posted to YouTube on June 1 shows the gruesome killing of a Somali refugee man, with young men and boys kicking and hurling bricks and stones on the shattered body of the victim as pedestrians and cars passed by.
The inhumane murder of 25-year-old Abdi Nasir Mahmoud God triggered Somali demonstrations against the South African government. Violence against migrants and refugees in South Africa is often framed as "xenophobic", and it was no surprise to see Somali demonstrators carrying banners and slogans that made this point. Coverage of this violence frequently underscored how the plight of refugees and migrants in South Africa threatens the dreams of the rainbow nation, as envisioned by anti-apartheid leaders such as Nelson Mandela.
But while migrant and refugee victimisation in South Africa cannot be denied, attention must be paid to South Africa's own chasm between the haves and have-nots. Evidence from seven years of research in these informal communities provides evidence that the victimisation Somalis and other foreigners confront is context-specific and cannot be divorced from the generalised violence experienced by poor residents of these informal settlements.
Desperate migrants, distressed communities
Somalis and other migrants in informal housing areas are often unable to enter the formal economic sector, and run small stores called spazas instead. A young Somali man who moves to Johannesburg may head to Mayfair, a heavily Somali neighbourhood, and seek employment from within the community. Successful Somali entrepreneurs who own multiple spaza shops in townships and informal settlements may employ him. The young man may head to work in a spaza - which often consist of caged, corrugated-iron shacks - serving customers he fears through metal barriers. He may have a machete, a gun or at least a club beside him. He eats, sleeps, defecates and prays with one eye open to watch out for potential robbery and violence from local thugs.
The young man takes this job, which permits him to send home $50 to $100 to families left behind and to dream of a better life. The man may save $1,000 to $2,000 within a year or so. Two to three men may combine their savings and eventually start their own business. If they survive the first few years, these men will eventually employ the new refugee arrivals while they settle in Mayfair or Bellville, where they will rarely confront physical violence.
For many of these Somali refugees, their entrepreneurial spirit and the lack of other options leads them to poor black South African residential areas. Mainstream economic industries neglect these informal settlements. The only goods and services that poor residents in these areas would be able to obtain requires travel to grocery stores such as Shoprite and PicknPay, found in central townships and city centres. Somalis, Mozambicans, Bangladeshis and other foreign-born entrepreneurs go into these informal settlements and start successful small enterprises that free the locals from travelling for basic needs. Foreign entrepreneurs have thus done something that South Africa's established business community never dared to do.
But many of these informal settlements are unfortunately no-go zones, rarely serviced by the police, mostly with unpaved roads and plagued by crime, poverty and unemployment.
A divided nation
In a speech on "Reconciliation and Nation Building" that the then Deputy President Thabo Mbeki gave at the National Assembly in Cape Town on May 29, 1998, he stated: "This reality of two nations, underwritten by the perpetuation of the racial, gender and spatial disparities born of a very long period of colonial and apartheid white minority domination, constitutes the material base which reinforces the notion that, indeed, we are not one nation, but two nations."
The white/black racial divide Mbeki referred to is now accompanied by the increasing class divisions within the black majority population. The millions of government housing units, known as "Mandela houses", in most townships also represent a major accomplishment of post-apartheid South African governments. These uniform small brick houses are the most visible fruits of the liberation reaped by an important segment of the South African black population, creating what may be considered working-class neighbourhoods now representing a second nation in South Africa.
Another key accomplishment of the South African post-apartheid governments has been the refugee and migrant law reforms undertaken since 1994. South Africa now hosts the largest number of asylum seekers in the world. Groups such as Somalis are granted refugee status, with freedom of movement, work permits and access to basic services such as healthcare.
Desperate refugees and migrants unable to find economic opportunities in the formal economy seek their South African dreams in dangerous informal settlements.
Somali enclaves in Mayfair in greater Johannesburg, Bellville in Cape Town, and Korsten in Port Elizabeth showcase how little differentiated these refugees can become from the mainstream diverse populations seeking their livelihoods in urban centres. Successful Somali entrepreneurs who belong to the earliest cohort are adamant that they rarely confront any violence or xenophobia in their urban settings. Some of these entrepreneurs run clothing stores in the heart of central business districts in Cape Town, Port Elizabeth and Johannesburg. These Somalis are part and parcel of the middle-class South African nation and their experiences could not be further from those working and living in informal South African settlements.
Violence against migrants and refugees is thus mostly concentrated in certain areas. This represents a third nation in post-apartheid South Africa. This is one that you will never see when travelling on the high-speed Guatrain from Pretoria to Sandton. And this nation is where migrants and refugees are most vulnerable to vicious attacks, where more than 1,000 Somalis have been killed since 1997. This is where law and order is absent.
You can find the rest of the article here:
http://m.aljazeera.com/story/201361895126526626
Theres a video of the horrendous attack and murder of Abdi Nasir Mahmoud on YouTube. I didn't have the stomach to watch it. But Subhanallah its a horrible death, and downright inhumane!