SAIIA’s Steven Gruzd on ENCA discussing South Africa’s response to the recent surge of Xenophobic violence.
The recurring xenophobic violence is no new matter in South Africa. In 2006 an assessment on South Africa’s state of democracy by the African Peer Review Mechanism (APRM), urged the government to address the perception that migrant workers are unfair competition for locals.
The APRM Country Review report concluded that this perception would play a key role in perpetuating conflict and xenophobia, fast forward to 2017 and the matter still persists.
SAIIA Governance and APRM and Foreign Policy Programme Head, Steven Gruzd featured on Enca’s Checkpoint to further discuss some of the findings of the report and South Africa’s state of violence projected towards foreigners.
The institute again calls for an end to the violence and the stereotyping of certain groups as more crime-prone than others. South Africa must address the ‘demon’ of xenophobia and violence once and for all if it is to remain a leader for good on the continent.
