by Alice Mpeshe
Today, I want to talk about the xenophobia in South Africa. I want to tell the truth that most of us are avoiding.
South Africans are not xenophobic because they hate foreigners. They are overwhelmed. Hate is a choice. Overwhelm is a condition. When a country can not build houses, create jobs, or keep clinics open, the people who live there start to panic. Panic does not separate a failing government from a foreign national. It just lashes out at whoever is closest. That is not an excuse for violence. It is an explanation for exhaustion.
South Africa had just survived apartheid. The country was still bleeding when the doors opened. It was not ready to host other nations. It was not ready to heal itself. But the doors opened anyway. And the people came.
The Distance
If a person from Lesotho or Namibia can not find work in South Africa, they can go home the next day. A person from Somalia who can not find work may have sold everything to get here. They can not go back. So they stay. Permanently.
That is the difference. South Africa can absorb people from neighboring countries because the flow is natural. Families live on both sides of the border. People come and go. They work, they go home, they come back. The pressure is manageable. It has been happening for generations.
But a person from Somalia, Ethiopia, Nigeria, or Pakistan can not go home for the weekend. They can not go home for a year. They may never go home. So when they come, they do not circulate. They settle. They bring their families. They have children. Those children become South African. And the country absorbs not just a worker but a permanent branch of a distant nation.
That is not sustainable. South Africa was not built to carry the whole continent. It can carry its neighbors. It can not carry the world.
The Burden
Spaza shops and salons are low-skill jobs. Any South African can open a spaza shop. Any South African woman can braid hair. These are not specialized skills worth traveling across the continent for. If someone must come from Somalia, Ethiopia, Nigeria, or Pakistan, it should be to fill a gap South Africa cannot fill itself. A doctor. An engineer. A teacher. Not a shopkeeper. Not a hairdresser.
When people travel thousands of kilometers to do jobs, locals can do, they do not contribute. They compete. Competition, when jobs are already scarce, becomes a burden. Not because the person is worthless. Because the country is already full. Adding more people does not help anyone breathe.
The Overwhelm
Clinics are already full. Nurses are already tired. Medicines are already short. Houses are already a crisis. People live in shacks not because they want to, but because there is nowhere else to go. When thousands more arrive, they also need houses. They also need care. The shacks multiply. The queues grow longer. Every new person adds weight to a system that was never given the resources to carry its own.
The Trap
If people keep leaving their countries for South Africa, their countries will never develop. Why? Because the ones who leave are the ones with the drive to work, to build, to change things. They take that drive with them. Their home countries lose not just workers but also the example of what is possible. The next generation grows up seeing that success means leaving. So they leave too. The cycle continues. The country stays poor.
Meanwhile, South Africa gets more people competing for low-skill jobs, more people needing houses, and more people needing clinics. South Africa is not saved. It is just overwhelmed.
This is not a solution. It is a trap. No one wins. Not the countries people leave. Not South Africa. Not the continent.
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