The belated deployment yesterday of the South African army to "volatile areas" which have seen violent attacks on immigrant communities is to be welcomed. Similarly, the attempts by King Goodwill Zwelithini to distance himself from his own inflammatory comments last week. These were widely seen to have legitimised and encouraged xenophobic attacks in which this month at least seven people have died and some 5,000 been displaced .
Zwelithini, the traditional leader of the Zulus, had said that African migrants should “take their things and go”. He now claims to have been misquoted and claims his comments were not an encouragement to violence. He appealed for an end to the violence and the protection of immigrants.
The attacks on migrants are not the first – in 2008, more than 60 foreigners were killed in similar unrest. Mass youth unemployment in the impoverished and violent townships and the competition for scarce resources have regularly fed xenophobic tensions and outbreaks of killings.
South Africa may have eliminated the formal structures of apartheid but the pernicious effects of its promotion of ethnic-tribal difference live on in the minds and culture of many of its people. And not just in the enduring divisions between black and white.
It is to be found within the black and coloured communities and in the widespread suspicion of Africans from outside the country who have come to escape poverty to a country which, with all its difficulties, has become the powerhouse of Africa.
The attacks, and the desperate search for scapegoats they represent, are also the symptom of a deep political malaise that has seen an erosion of the political authority of the ANC and of the institutions of the state which seem incapable and/or unwilling to intervene. Corruption and patronage at the highest levels of the party have done much to undermine the country’s democratic pretensions and constitution, while the re-emergence of violent xenophobia besmirches its core commitment to multiracialism.