Cosatu condemns xenophobic attack 27-03-08

 

COSATU condemns xenophobic attacks

The Congress of South African Trade Unions strongly condemns the attacks on non-South African residents in the Brazzaville area of Tshwane, including the murder of two Zimbabweans who were burned alive when their shacks were set on fire, actions which appear to be motivated by xenophobia.

We welcome the prompt arrest of those alleged to have carried out the attacks and demand that all those responsible for these violent acts be brought to justice. We also demand that security be increased to protect the lives of all the residents of the area.

COSATU is totally opposed to xenophobia - hostility to people of a different race or nationality. It sets worker against worker and the poor against the poor, when we should be uniting our class in our common struggle for liberation and a better life, against those who exploit us.

In South Africa, the roots of this problem lie with the apartheid regime's deliberate strategy to destroy the economic infrastructure of our neighbouring countries and support counter-revolutionary movements in order to destabilise them.

As a result some of these countries today still face huge problems of underdevelopment and poverty and there has been a constant stream of economic refugees into South Africa, looking for work and an escape from poverty.

As a recent Special Assignment programme on SABC 3 illustrated, South African employers, especially on the farms, take advantage of this and exploit these immigrants, paying poverty wages, flouting labour laws and housing them in squalid conditions. Illegal immigrants are particularly vulnerable because if they dare demand complain, police can arrest and deport them.

All this inevitably means also that fewer jobs are available for South African workers; it forces down the already low levels of wages and worsens working conditions. It also increases the pressure on the already inadequate available housing in the poorest communities.

Tragically, this has led to some of the most oppressed South Africans turning their anger not against these bosses but against African illegal and legal immigrants, believing that the high rates of unemployment, poverty and crime result from the number of foreigners in the area where they live or work.

Such xenophobic views however have no scientific grounds. The migrants are scapegoats for socio-economic problems that existed long before they arrived and will continue as long as we remain trapped in an economic system that perpetuates high levels of poverty and unemployment at around 40%. Both the perpetrators and the victims of xenophobia are overwhelmingly poor, working-class Africans who are unemployed or in low-paid, unskilled jobs.

There is also no evidence that migrants cause crime, which has its roots in poverty and unemployment, not immigration, whether legal or illegal.

Immigrants will continue to stream into South Africa as long as the socio-economic conditions in their country of origin are even worse, which is especially true just now in Zimbabwe. They will put up with bad working and living conditions here, rather than return to face the hunger in their own countries.

COSATU's 7th Congress resolution has pointed the way forward. It rejected the notions of racism, tribalism and xenophobia, and resolved, "to maintain the unity of the oppressed masses of our country". The challenge now is to implement this resolution and destroy xenophobia, racism and tribalism in South Africa and throughout the world. This will require a bold twofold approach.

Firstly we must develop the skills capacity of all the marginalised and poor, create new jobs, roll out essential services, health and education, and bring the poor, both South African and non-South African into the mainstream of economic and social participation.

Secondly we must assist our neighbouring countries to solve their economic problems, so that their people no longer need to look for an escape route out of poverty. This must include the campaign to reform world trade, so that it no longer benefits the rich and powerful developed world at the expense of the poor developing nations.