Foreign nationals are used as a scapegoat for government’s failures: Kopanang Africa

Anti-Xenophobia Movement, Kopanang Africa, says foreign nationals are used as a scapegoat for government’s failure to intervene in the country’s economy.

Members of the Dudula Movement have taken to the streets, blaming foreigners for crime, drug problems in their communities and the unemployment crisis in the country.

However, an Anti-Xenophobia representative Mametlwe Sebei, who is also a President of the General Industries Workers Union of South Africa, says foreign nationals shouldn’t be blamed for all SA’s problems.

“It is important to reclaim the streets of South Africa for working-class unity and solidarity, to reject hate, to reject xenophobia. We are saying that none of the solutions and rhetoric that is coming from Dudula movement begin to provide the understanding of deeper problems of poverty and unemployment and failing public services as a justification for scapegoating migrants. Who are like all of us, are poor and trying to make a living and we are saying they scapegoated and the people who must be held accountable are the people in government whose policies for the past 27 years have led to astronomical levels of unemployment.”

Anti-xenophobia March I Kopanang Africa stages a march against xenophobia: