Johannesburg, South Africa – A semblance of normalcy is returning to the streets of the inner city of Johannesburg weeks after xenophobic violence hit South Africa’s commercial capital.
The city appears to have just moved along, wearing the memory of violence in large billboards condemning the xenophobia that killed at least eight people, injured hundreds and displaced thousands more in early April.
But behind the facade is a massive government operation targeting illegal foreign nationals that many have argued is “state xenophobia”.
Several hundreds of migrants, many undocumented, have been rounded up by the South African Police Services during stop-and-search procedures and early morning raids throughout the country over the past three weeks.
According to the South African police, the “Operation Fiela-Reclaim” campaign has netted illegal weapons, narcotics and counterfeit goods, directly linked to the surge in xenophobic violence last month. Civil society organisations, however, are concerned that abuses are being perpetrated in the name of quelling xenophobic violence.
Successive raids have taken place in Jeppestown, Hillbrow in Johannesburg, parts of Pretoria and Cape Town.
Responding to the latest developments, the People’s Coalition against Xenophobia, a group of civil society organisations, has gone as far as to label the government operation “institutional xenophobia.”
Activists like the veteran trade unionist Steven Faulkner said it was inappropriate for the government to arrest people who are believed to be undocumented visitors to the country on a mass scale instead of tackling the root causes of crime.
“To equate crime with undocumented people in our society is not tackling xenophobia, it is legitimising xenophobia,” Faulkner told a press briefing in Johannesburg on Tuesday.