The President of South Africa, Jacob Zuma, is right when he says people are fed with crime. He just does not understand the extend of his own involvement in creating the perception that foreigners are deeply involved with criminal intent in South Africa.
Let us be honest. Criminality in South Africa is not the exclusive preserve of black African migrants of low social status, who are the only victims of xenophobic attacks.
Radovan Krejcir is not a black African. Nor was Mark Thatcher who was convicted of organizing coups from South Africa. The Guptas have not been convicted of anything but the stories swirling murkily around them are not nice.
Secondly where criminality occurs it is often in collusion with South Africans including officials in some cases. Krejcir literally had a hit squad of police officers on his pay. Former police commissioner, Jackie Selebi, served time in jail for receiving bribes from a criminal who was not a black African migrant. That is like the FBI director taking bribes from say Osama bin Laden.
Even in cases where African immigrants are involved in criminality, you will find that somewhere there is the connivance of officialdom. Take for example issue that seems to have triggered the most recent upheaval, brothels full of human-trafficked women. The police know exactly where those brothels are. In the suburb I live, the street that runs right in front of the police station is full of such brothels. They are left undisturbed because the pimps 'eat' together with the officers.
In that same street there is an illegal shebeen within a couple hundred metres of the police station's main door. Other shebeens that spring up further away are quickly shut down. The rumour is the shebeen owner is related to one of the police officers.
One of my relatives was once arrested for public drinking and urination in that street. When I went to pay a fine for him, I personally witnessed about 10 girls being released from the police cells directly into the custody of a man who seemed Nigerian. Apparently the man had 'forgotten' to 'take care' of the police officers which is why 'his' girls had been rounded up the previous night.
A few years back when I was reporting as the condition of my work permit the male home affairs official serving me complained that virtually every female officer he worked with was living with a Nigerian. He said for that reason whenever a law enforcement operation was planned, the criminals would be told in advance and disappear only to come back after the operation.
Last year a journalist did an investigative report on how a police officer involved with a drug dealer was helping him by arresting his rivals.
The real problem that needs to be tackled is corruption and inefficient service.
The people who do not have proper documentation are usually not involved in hard high value criminality. Most of the time they are working without papers.
Often that is because home affairs has not responded to their applications for permits or asylum on time. And uncle of mine with a degree from Europe and working as an Oracle expert for NHS spend two years waiting for a permit. His old permit expired and for the second of those two years he was technically illegal. He eventually got the permit.
The hard criminals often have 'valid' documentation. They have the money to pay hefty bribes to officials, and buy whatever documents they need.
I am not calling the Guptas criminals but they are an example of high value migrants who carefully cultivate connections with senior government officials. I believe I do not need to mention names or the level of government they are connected to.
The Guptas have not been convicted of anything but money laundering to Dubai, attempting to plant functionaries in the country's cabinet, and trying to smuggle suitcases of diamonds out of the country are among the accusations that been publicly made against them.
Very often high value migrants, among them criminals, also afford to pay for 'marriage' to South African women. A former workmate of mine once told me that her cousin was getting paid about R1000 every month for 'marriage' by a Nigerian.
She wanted to know if I could enter into the same arrangement with her.
The bottom line is that for every criminal migrant, there is several South Africans working with them. This does not just apply to migrants and South Africans of low social status. It goes way, way up the social strata. People who make a lot of noise about migrants are often themselves eating from the hands of migrants.
But many are hypocrites like Edward Zuma who once complained about foreigners without batting an eyelid about his father's close friends.
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