In July 1989 the chairman of the Council for Population Development, Professor J P de Lange, claimed that population growth was South Africa’s ‘ticking time bomb’.
He said that the country had one of the highest population growth rates in the world, and that numbers were doubling every 30 years. Professor De Lange pointed out that in rural areas and in the homelands, African women still had an average of more than six children.
At its current growth rate South Africa would within two decades find itself in a dilemma where its resources and socio-economic capabilities would be insufficient for its population, he said. ‘This will give rise to total social disintegration, unemployment, poverty and misery which will become unmanageable, even in the best of constitutional dispensations. (The Natal Mercury: 13 July 1989, 22 July 1989)
Professor De Lange believed that such high population growth could be halted only if the PDP managed to reduce the birth rate to 2,1 children per woman by the year 2010
[SA Inst. of Race Relations Report, 1989-90 (PDF)]
That was before the ANC decided to give their voters and taxpayers the big middle finger, by allowing an additional 6 - 11 million legal and illegal immigrants to aggravate South Africa's social disintegration, unemployment, poverty and misery time-bomb...
Will foreign workers flocking to World Cup face xenophobic attacks?
With less than a week before the opening of the South Africa World Cup, an influx of foreigners in search of work has raised ethnic tensions. Some fear a repeat of the 2008 xenophobic riots that killed 67 foreign migrants.
By Scott Baldauf, Staff writer, Savious Kwinika, Correspondent
June 6, 2010, Christian Science Monitor
 Picture: Queen's Kitchen sells lunches to workers at a construction site in Johannesburg, May 20. Small businesses like this are increasingly being run by entrepreneurial immigrants in the run- up to the World Cup, but talk of xenophobic attacks on immigrants worry many. Melanie Stetson Freeman/Staff |
Well before dawn every day, Phinius Mawira takes a crate of oranges, apples, bananas, peanuts, and other snacks to one of the busiest street corners in the township of Diepsloot, north of Johannesburg.
Customers are happy with his service, the Zimbabwean migrant says, because most other shops in the area don’t open until well after most commuters have already left Diepsloot on minibus taxis for their jobs in Johannesburg. But some customers whisper the warning: “After the World Cup is over, you’d better run back to your country. People will come for you.”
Those are words Mr. Mawira takes quite seriously, given the xenophobic riots of 2008 that killed 67 foreign migrants who were perceived to be taking South African jobs. Some 200,000 migrants took shelter in tent city camps before the South African government shut them down, often returning the migrants to the townships that expelled them with no attempt at reconciliation.
“We are all worried about that,” says Mawira, who left Zimbabwe two years ago, after a national election failed to dislodge the long-ruling autocratic President Robert Mugabe. “Most of the people here think that we foreigners take their jobs. But this is just my business.” He stares a bit and says, “People talk about what happened in 2008, and me, I’m a Zimbabwean. I’m alone here. I’m worried.”
The government says there are no indications that a storm is brewing.
Yet there are reasons for concern. South Africa has high unemployment, despite 15 years of economic growth. The World Cup gave the country a boost, but now that all the stadiums, hotels, rail-links, and roads have been built, South Africa has likely reached a peak. After the World Cup ends July 11, there will be less need for waiters, bell-boys, and others in the service industry.
If boom leads to bust, recent history suggests that locals might take out their frustrations on migrants who appear to be prospering.
Government prepares for possible xenophobic attacks
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But South African officials say there will be no return to the bad old days of 2008.
Last week, government spokesman Themba Maseko told the Monitor that South Africa would do all it could to protect its image by ensuring that no foreigner is attacked.
Mr. Maseko warned that any xenophobic attacks perpetrated against foreign nationals would not be tolerated. He noted that the cabinet had reestablished the interministerial committee (IMC), which focuses on and deals with incidents and threats of xenophobia attacks on foreign nationals.
"This came after reports of possible attacks on foreigners after the 2010 FIFA World Cup," says Maseko. "The law enforcement agencies will not hesitate to act speedily and decisively against anyone found to incite or participate in violent acts against foreign nationals."
But South African citizens, mainly from the poor black townships, argue that an attack could not be ruled out. Interviews with a number of South Africans shows a deep animosity toward foreigners in their country.
'The best is to kick them out violently'
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Kabelo Gumede of Katlehong township, located some 12 miles south of Johannesburg Central Business District (CBD), says he is fed up with foreign nationals coming to South Africa to make him jobless.
"Every morning I go right round Johannesburg city looking for a job, but I can't find any because of these foreigners,” says Mr. Gumede. “The best thing is to kick them out violently."
Tiyani Tsakisi of Diepsloot, which is located nine miles northwest of Johannesburg, says he hates foreigners for stealing South Africa's beautiful girls and women. "The problem with foreigners is that they pay huge sums of money to our girls and women resulting in them refusing to fall in love with us," Mr. Tsakisi says.
Tshidiso Mokoena of Vereeniging says foreigners bring in drugs such as cocaine, mandrax, and marijuana, and commit robbery. "I have no problem living with foreigners provided they respect our elders. Now my main problem staying with our African brothers and sisters is that they impregnate our girls and dump them," says Mokeona.
Threats are real: officer
 “For the World Cup, they give a visa to everybody.” -- Khola, the Ghanaian [Protest Sign: Land of Opportunity for Murderers, Rapists and Thieves. Lone Smallholders Protestor Against Crime Magnet for Immigration: 3 - 6 million Illegal Immigrants in South Africa] |
Duncan Breen, advocacy officer for the Consortium for Refugees and Migrants in South Africa (CoRMSA), says such threats are widespread, "real," and "they have to be prevented at all cost.”
The 2008 attacks were not an isolated incident, Mr. Breen says, citing at least 10 incidents of race violence that have occurred in 2010 in the Johannesburg area.
"Now, a week from the opening match of the World Cup, threats are mounting of further mass xenophobic violence once the event is over,” he says.
Xenophobic attacks against foreigners are based on “misplaced” and “primitive” stereotypes, says Marc Gbaffou, an Ivoirian national and president of African Diaspora Forum, an advocacy group.
“Prevention does not rest with ourselves," says Mr. Gbaffou. "Until the South African government engages in an education and political campaign against xenophobia, and fully deconstructs the scape-goating process when confronted to residents' frustrations, we believe the threat remains very high."
Zimbabweans feel they have no choice
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Many South Africans are of the mind-set that violence against foreigners will force them home, says Luke Zunga of the Global Zimbabwe Forum, which has 7 million members living in worldwide diaspora. That feeling is grossly misplaced, he argues.
"Zimbabweans are not in South Africa by choice; many never dreamed of coming to South Africa,” says Mr. Zunga.
“They are forced out of their country by politics, which led to economic meltdown.”
Local township councilors are under pressure for their failure to deliver basic services such as water, electricity, and trash pickup, so they often fan the xenophobic threats as a diversion, Zunga says. "Basically xenophobia is caused by the [competition] for jobs and space, particularly in poor areas. We appeal to South Africans not to do this, but let’s work together," he says.
Mohamad Radi Gruer, an Ethiopian shopkeeper who arrived just two months ago to run a shop in Diepsloot, says he’s praying that nothing comes of the threats.
“People are telling me, ‘All foreigners will go out,’” he says, standing in a neatly arranged shop full of corn meal, oil, and other staples.
 Violence, Labour and the Displacement of Zimbabweans in De Doorns, Western Cape, by Jean Pierre Misago (PDF) |
He was robbed a month ago, and he knows a Somali shopkeeper who was also robbed and then shot by the perpetrators.
“If I was alone, I could just run away,” says Mr. Gruer. “But I’m married. My wife is seven months pregnant. Maybe she gets her baby in July, during World Cup. So now, I’m just praying to God. Praying to God.”
» » » » [Christian Science Monitor]
» » [WR: Magnet for Immigration: 3 - 6 million Illegal Immigrants in SA]
» » [WR: World Cup 2010: Magnet for Africa's Uneducated & Impoverished]
» » [WR: Local Politicians & Labour Brokers Inciting Xenophobia Over Scarce Resources]
» » [WR: Overloading Australia: Why New Prime Minister says No to ‘Big Australia’]
» » [IOL: 28-05-2010: 'More attacks on foreigners after World Cup' ]
» » [IOL: 30-06-2010: Army moves in amid xenophobia rumours]
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Big Picture Crisis Management Perspective: Xenophobia & Scarce Resources:
Excerpts: First Amicus Curiae
Concourt # 23-10: Citizen v. McBride
A Serious Problem Solving Strategy for Crisis Management Rule is: Don’t make it your goal to control effects, make it your goal to control causes. If you control causes, then you don’t have to control effects.
Now if there is volumes of literature, and evidence that population pressures colliding with scarce resources frequently result in political and/or resource war violence; then anyone serious and sincere about creating an environment where peace, and harmony can flourish would investigate, among others, how population pressures contributed to political violence, and how population pressures can be reduced?*****
“Resource scarcity will be a direct cause of confrontation, conflict, and war. The struggle to maintain access to critical resources will spark local and regional conflicts that will evolve into the most frequent conventional wars of the next century. Basic resources will prove inadequate for populations exploding beyond natural limits, and we may discover truths about ourselves that we do not wish to know. In the end, the greatest challenge may be to our moral order.”
-- Ralph Peters, US Army War College, The Culture of Future Conflict (PDF)*****
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In the 1989 SAIRR Race Relations Report (PDF), we are informed that the Chairman of the Council for Population Development, Professor JP de Lange, claimed that population growth was South Africa’s ‘ticking time bomb’, and South Africa within two decades South Africa would find itself in a dilemma where its resources and socio-economic capabilities would be insufficient for its population, which would give rise to total social disintegration, unemployment, poverty, and misery which would become unmanageable, even in the best of constitutional dispensations. He urgently urged a birth rate of 2.1 or less children per woman per year. The Population Development Programme recognized that a direct relationship existed between standard of living, an effective family planning and population growth.
In a 1992/93 Race Relations Survey (PDF) by the South African Institute of Race Relations (SAIRR), we are told that the high population growth is the cause of growth in poverty, unemployment and squatter camps, and most of the serious problems in South Africa; Population pressures are destroying the environment; the IFP and FRD call for ethics of 2 children per family as urgent population control priority; Population Growth outstrips Economic Growth for many years, and black avoid participation in family planning programs.*****
At SAHistory.org, in Grade 12: Africa in the Twentieth Century: Economic, we are given a brief economics lesson about economic growth vs population growth, population explosions and corruption and informed of our Lessons Learning outcome:
“Learners will be expected to demonstrate an ability to work independently, formulating enquiry questions and gathering, analysing, interpreting and evaluating relevant evidence to answer questions.
- What is subsistence farming?
- Write a definition for communism and capitalism. Contrast the two economic system
- Why has Africa such a big problem with overpopulation?
- Write a definition of globalisation.
- What do you think is the biggest economic problem in Africa?
*****
In 'Things were better in the bad old days' Andrew Quinn of IOL writes:
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Most South Africans, both black and white, believe the country was better run under apartheid and say unemployment and crime are the government's top challenges, according to two new polls released this week (2002).
In Why is the Transkei collapsing? An open letter from Mbulelo Ncedana to Nelson Mandela, Mbulelo Ncedana, writes:I heard things I thought I'll never hear again; old people, with rheumy eyes, saying things were much better under the Bantustan government.
The government has spent billions to build new stadiums and other infrastructure for tourists and a small domestic minority, but cannot ensure that school kids in the most needy of communities have decent soccer facilities and equipment.
Here in South Africa (and this applies equally to the public and private sectors) dishonesty and incompetence are either rewarded or simply ignored. With a few exceptions, those who expose and confront the truth - and who try to uphold collective and personal accountability - are punished, marginalised and labelled.
When lying, cheating and conscious ineptitude become standard "governance" practice (whatever the "sector"), we are in deep crisis.
Do you blame them when they come with these preposterous ideas of finding independent states like the one ybaThembu. Your people, tata, abaThembu, no longer feel like being part of South Africa you created since 1994, and want self determination or independence.
In conclusion, tata, I hope my letter does not upset you too much, but sometimes we need to take toll and assume responsibilities for our failures. We've failed our people. There's no other way of looking at it. I don't see the bunch that came after you doing things better, instead things seem to be going from bad to worse.
Excerpts from Concourt 23-10: 1st Amicus Curiae: Evidentiary Documents: as quoted in: » » Ubuntu Brief of Amicus Curiae a Bushido Dischordian Futilitarian, In Support Of: Radical Honesty Common Sense Population Policy Social Contract Interpretations of Promotion of National Unity & Reconciliation Act, 34 of 1995 » » E: Lysistrata Tsedeq Interpretation of Promotion of National Unity and Reconciliation Act and F: TRC Secret: Apartheid: A Just War for Demographic Survival from Marxist ‘Swart Gevaar’? (PDF)
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