AHMR African Human Mobilty Review - Volume 8 No 3, SEP-DEC 2022
and practices of racial and ethnic superiority of certain cultures over others persist
today in one form or another.24
In Zimbabwe, the ruling ZANU-PF party has used systemic repression to
cling to power despite severe socio-economic and political failures. The party’s
record of harassing, arresting, and even killing critics and opponents extends to
but is not limited to, people with supposed foreign ancestry. To prevent them from
voting against the ruling party, it has stripped them or blocked them from obtaining
citizenship, creating and perpetuating statelessness to achieve political ends.
In post-apartheid South Africa, indigenous populations have become frustrated
that their living standards have not improved under democracy as promised. Many
locals see foreigners as competing for resources in the context of poverty.25 Foreigners
have become an easy ‘outsider’ to scapegoat for unemployment, food insecurity,
crime, and health and education failures. Expressions of xenophobia have increased
sharply and have led to riots, looting, destruction, violence, and death. Vernacular
and accent ‘tests’ have been applied by citizens to determine if someone is local or
foreign.26 Politicians and communities have endorsed violence and exclusion and
leveraged xenophobic rhetoric and scapegoating to distract from their own failings.27
In Madagascar, the post-colonial government has leveraged nationality
to uphold longstanding discrimination against a targeted group. Despite the
disenfranchised group’s willingness and ability to contribute socially and economically
to society, the Madagascar government and some Malagasy people officially and
unofficially continue to target and prevent the Karana from full participation under
the pretence of not looking or acting ‘Malagasy enough’.
These practices reflect a worrying rise in nationalism and nationality
deprivation happening globally. In the post-colonial and globalisation era, nationality
has emerged as a key determinant of who is designated as ‘insiders’ or ‘outsiders’. In
many cases, xenophobia has increased as a misguided expression of patriotism.
William Mpofu argues that the term xenophobia conceals rather than reveals
the structural racism that motivates it. He argues that South Africa has not recovered
from homeland racist nationalism that placed black natives as targets for hatred,
discrimination, and exclusion. Instead, they have redirected the racism and exclusion
toward Black African ‘outsiders’ from other countries.28
Nations have not adequately addressed these colonial legacies or accounted
See ‘World Conference Against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance Declaration and
Programme of Action’ United Nations Department of Public Information (2002), available at www.ohchr.org/sites/
default/files/Documents/Publications/Durban_text_en.pdf
25
Godfrey Mulaudzi Lizette Lancaster & Gabriel Hertis ‘Busting South Africa’s xenophobic myths starts at grassroots’ ISS
Today, available at https://issafrica.org/iss-today/busting-south-africas-xenophobic-myths-starts-at-grassroots
26
Citizen Reporter ‘Trevor Noah applauds Malema’s “perfect” views on xenophobic attacks’ The Citizen 10 September
2019,
https://citizen.co.za/news/south-africa/news-xenophobia/2177225/watch-trevor-noah-applauds-malemasperfect-views-on-xenophobic-attacks/
27
Jean Pierre Misago & Loren B Landau ‘Truck driver “war” about more than migration’ New Frame 28 June 2019, available at www.newframe.com/truck-driver-war-about-more-than-migration/
28
William Mpofu ‘Xenophobia as racism: The colonial underside of nationalism in South Africa’ (2020) 3 International
Journal of Critical Diversity Studies.
24
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