UHURU PRESENTS:
UNDERSTANDING AND
OVERCOMING XENOPHOBIA
A ONE DAY COLLOQUIUM
At the present moment,
xenophobic practices in South Africa are taking a number of nefarious forms from
the exclusion of foreign students and staff from universities through the
denial of visas, to the systematic unleashing of mob and state violence against
the weakest sections of our population. This violence in particular has gone so
far as to invade the sanctuary of churches and has included the deployment of
the military and not just the police against poor communities thus treating the
latter as potential enemies. It has recently become clearer in fact that
xenophobia is not a problem of poverty but primarily a problem of identity
politics endemic to South Africa, a kind of politics which state institutions
and their agents have been pursuing since the early 1990s. Most analyses reduce
the question of xenophobia to one of criminality and poverty and deplore
xenophobic practices without offering much in terms of ideas for a solution.
