SAFTU rejects the xenophobia and Afrophobia

2 April 2019

SAFTU has noted with dismay the resurgence of combination xenophobic attacks directed at our fellow African brothers and sisters in parts of our country, South Africa and acts of criminality motivated by nothing but criminality. 

SAFTU as organisation was formed to reject and fight all kinds of discrimination whether targeted against people of other country’s origin, race based superior mentality, tribal, sexual and other forms of chauvinism. SAFTU strongly condemns the xenophobic attacks against our African neighbours or any other part of the world. 

These attacks are based on the state of mind that Stephen Biko spoke about when he said the most potent weapon in the hands of the oppressor is the mind of the oppressed. Steve Biko, Robert Sobukwe, Amilcar Cabral, Frantz Fanon, Patrice Lumumba, Oliver Tambo and countless others African revolutionary and intellectual should be turning on their graves to see how the people they sacrificed their lives for turning against each other instead of uniting against a common enemy. 

Some of the people targeting foreign nationals in the name of xenophobia know that they are ordinary criminals, the lumpens characters in our society that Karl Marx referred to as the scum of the earth. These elements hijack whatever grievances and concerns from the population to launch barbaric campaigns to slaughter other human beings. 

SAFTU acknowledges that our people in particular the residents from the working class residential areas are facing an unprecedented squeeze. There is an intense competition for scarce resources. The economic system chosen by our leaders, the capitalist system, by its nature is not neither meant nor designed to respond to the crisis facing human kind. It’s a profit based system where employment, poverty alleviation, etc. are a product of a by product of central profit goal.

To make this even worse, most of the African continent, from Cape to Cairo is the face of failed revolutions. Workers and the poor majority bear the brunt of these failed revolutions. Everywhere in our richest but poorest continent workers are on the run fleeing devastating impact of neoliberalism, austerity programmes and structural adjustment programmes. They are fleeing the effects of gross mismanagement of the political and economic systems that have failed them. Poverty in South Africa is rising; inequalities everywhere in the world are rising; unemployment in South Africa and everywhere else in our continent is breaking all the previous records. More workers are being pushed out of the former secured and better paying jobs into casualised, outsourced and poor quality jobs with no job security on any kind of benefits. 

Faced with this humiliation that has in some cases intensified even under the conditions of so called freedom and democracy, the victims of this neglect, mismanagement and corruption are turning against each other. Hundreds have drowned in the meditteran and red sea fleeing poverty and wars in their own countries. Hundreds of thousands are being humiliated in many European countries. 

SAFTU calls on the working class here and abroad to accept that the capitalist system will not solve their crisis. They must accept that the only real solution is a socialist alternative where tyrants, chauvinists, the corrupt shall be put where they belong, in jail. 
South Africans in particular the working class must not take out their frustrations to other victims of failed revolutions. We call on the working class to mobilise against the common enemy of the working class.

In particular they must not blame the following crisis on foreign nationals but on their failed revolution:

1.    The 37% unemployment rate and or the 52% unemployment rate for youth under the age of 24 is not caused by foreign nationals but failed neoliberal and austerity programmes 

2.    That 55% of the South Africa population is living in pervert up from 52% is not the fault of the foreign nationals but of the government the majority of South Africans elected 

3.    The fact that we have become the most unequal society in the world have absolutely nothing to do with other victims escaping from other parts of the continent but it has everything to do with the government abandoning its historic standpoint that growth shall be through redistribution of wealth from the rich to the poor 

4.    That our youth is trapped in the drugs and violence epidemic has nothing to do with a few nationals caught peddling drugs. It has everything to do with rate of unemployment in particular amongst the young people, the failing and dysfunctional education system, poverty and inequalities. Gang wars ravaging our townships have little to do with foreign nationals. 

5.    Foreign nationals have absolutely nothing to do with our two tier education and health system. It is our government that has allowed a situation where a small elites enjoys the best facilities in the privately owned health and education system whilst the majority are trapped in a dysfunctional public health and education system. 

6.    South Africans must realise that it they, our society that has led to a situation where 57 bodies a day on average are picked in the streets killed mercilessly including children and old citizens. This violent culture is older than the arrival of the first migrant documented or not documented. This is our challenge which we must mobilise against. 

7.    Foreign entrepreneurs moving to our townships take advantage of the total failure of our government to train, nature, develop and protect the black owners of the spazza shops and SMMES. If these come into the country or have an unfair advantage of selling goods dumped into the country illegally from sweatshop economies, we must blame our own government for its failure to protect its own citizens and the local industries. After all the government knew what will be the impact of the moving into the township of the huge multinational retail stores. Government total commitment to prop up white monopoly capital even at the expense of Black shop owners cant be blamed on desperate foreign national taking advantage of the inept government. 

Issued by Zwelinzima Vavi, General Secretary, SAFTU, 2 April 2019