JOHANNESBURG Community leader Sichelo Shezi walks us through the narrow streets of the Diepsloot slum. A group of men play cards, an orange seller pushes his wares with rattling shopping carts, children kick a ball.
The atmosphere of Sunday afternoon in Diepsloot is, on the surface, austere. But beneath the surface is a deep divide. Everyone is afraid of growing crime, immigrants are afraid of the hostility of the native population.
A street vendor, a young man who carries dozens of larger and smaller bags on his shoulders and in his hands, walks towards me. Sichelo Shezi glances quickly and recognizes.
– An immigrant and a Mozambican, he says with a confident voice.
He recognizes the men playing cards as South Africans from a distance. In Diepsloot, an immigrant cannot blend in.
“If you are undocumented, you are a criminal”
According to a recent study, about four million people from neighboring countries live in South Africa. The largest group are Zimbabweans and Mozambicans.
In terms of percentage, there are fewer immigrants than, for example, in Finland, but anti-immigration opinions have intensified in South Africa as the country’s economy has slipped downhill.
In areas like Diepsloot, the problems of today’s South Africa are exacerbated: poverty, unemployment, crime, the drug problem and constant power outages.
Sichelo Shezi is a gentle man. According to him, the people of Diepsloot want to live peacefully side by side with immigrants.
But, he says, and his gaze hardens.
– If a person is in South Africa illegally, he has come here to commit crimes. Then he is a criminal.
Sichelo believes that the majority of foreigners living in Diepsloot are illegal, undocumented immigrants.
– When they commit crimes, the police have no chance of holding them accountable when they don’t even officially exist here.
So crime goes to immigrants. Likewise, unemployment.
– Employers prefer to hire illegal immigrants who do the work cheaper. The few job opportunities that exist go to immigrants. And we South Africans are suffering, says Shezi, sure of his point.
“He who is hungry commits crimes”
The welding machine is small, and the entrepreneur looks even smaller Zane Bandan in strong hands. Banda has a metal workshop on the street side of Diepsloot, whose businesses have become really small.
– Before the corona, there was still a reasonable amount of work. I make car trailers for Zimbabwean entrepreneurs who transport goods from South Africa to Zimbabwe and back. But Corona and anti-immigration have killed the business.
Zane Banda says he is a typical Zimbabwean in South Africa. He came here 25 years ago to support his family. And the same reason keeps him in Diepsloot still, even though it means separation from his wife and son who live on the Zimbabwean side.
– Many people here say that the only right to leave one’s country is to escape war. But what they don’t understand is that there is a war in Zimbabwe – an economic war.
– Our leaders cannot be trusted, they steal, are corrupt and do not think about the poor. In Zimbabwe there are hospitals without doctors and schools without teachers. The well-off send their children to schools abroad, we poor people can’t afford it.
Zane Banda is in South Africa and Diepsloot legally, but he feels the anti-immigrant feeling rising in his skin.
– I am afraid to go to any agency because I know that I will be discriminated against there. If I go to the hospital, I have to pay for my treatment myself. They say there is no money for Zimbabweans.
Banda admits that some of his compatriots are in the country illegally and also commit crimes. But he also emphatically says that crime does not look at nationality.
– Crimes are committed by those who are hungry, whether they are Zimbabweans, South Africans or Malawians. When a person is hungry, he is ready to do illegal things to feed himself.
Immigrants build the economy
Zane Banda has lived in South Africa for 25 years and doesn’t think he has taken anything away from anyone.
– I’ve employed people, taught young people to weld, been a community leader involved in developing the safety of Diepsloot.
The newly published proves the same Research published by the ISS Institute (you switch to another service) About immigrants from South Africa. According to the ISS, immigrants account for about nine percent of South Africa’s gross domestic product, even though they make up only six percent of the population.
The study also found no basis for the notion that immigrants commit more crimes than South Africans themselves. Only 2.3 percent of prisoners in South African prisons are of foreign origin.
Street patrols are looking for undocumented people
At street level in Diepsloot and other Johannesburg townships, the research does not weigh much.
Demonstrations have also been organized in Diepsloot, demanding stronger measures from the police against undocumented Zimbabweans, Mozambicans and other foreigners.
The threat often heard in these demonstrations is that if the police do not do their job, the residents will have to take the law into their own hands. There are several clearly xenophobic movements in South Africa, the most prominent of which is Operation Dudula.
The street patrols of these movements roam the poor neighborhoods of Johannesburg looking for undocumented migrants to hand them over to the police. Or to do something worse.
Death of Elvis Nyath
Community leader Sichelo Shezi finally leads us to the first zone of Diepsloot, Thubelile Street. It is, at least at the moment, the most notorious street in the entire area.
The generator throbs, the bar’s man-height speaker crackles music at ear-splitting volume. It’s a sunny Sunday afternoon, but Saturday’s hangover continues for many.
On April 6, a gardener, father of a family, a Zimbabwean was killed on the side of this street, in a dump yard Elvis Nyathi. His sentence was read by a crowd of men whose only authority was their own hatred. Nyathi’s crime was that he was in South Africa as an undocumented migrant.
Sichelo Shezi has already made it clear that he considers the undocumented to be criminals. But he still does not accept Elvis Nyathi’s fate.
– I think undocumented people should be sent back to their home countries. But this is wrong. In South Africa, no one is allowed to take the law into their own hands.
Xenophobia and racial hatred
Shezi also stands up for us when another deep divide in South African society jumps out. A young smartly dressed man without hesitation sets out to set up our film crew, just a little bleary-eyed.
– Who do you think you are when you come here with that white skin of yours? What do you think you’re doing here?
When I regret that I can’t do anything about my skin color, the situation gets more and more heated.
– Who do you think you are, who are you to talk to me about skin color.
The situation becomes truly threatening, but we get into the car and drive off Thubelile Street.
Xenophobia and racial hatred are left floating in the air, to the beat of the bar’s giant speaker.