Xenophobia harms trade and business

06 Sep, 2019 - 00:09 0 Views

eBusiness Weekly

The xenophobic attacks in South Africa are more than a human tragedy: they are also damaging business and trade across Africa and could well have adverse economic implications that will last for years.

The human tragedy is well reported and documented. Poor people of foreign origin flee their homes in fear of attack; scores of small shops, tuckshops in Zimbabwean speech, are looted and burned; foreign trucks are stopped and the drivers assaulted because some people appear startled that a Zambian transporter hires Zambian drivers to take and fetch cargoes from South Africa.

But the business implications range further. For a start trade is being disrupted, and at times and in some places seriously disrupted. Those foreign trucks are either bringing cargoes for South African ports, or are bringing goods or materials that South African businesses require, or most commonly are collecting cargoes of South African goods ordered by businesses back home. Why anyone would expect a business in another country to hire a South African transport company when it has its own trucks, or would expect a foreign transport company to hire South Africans the moment its trucks cross the Limpopo seems obscure, to put it politely.

Besides the formal trade in truck-load cargoes, there are, in addition, the shoppers and cross-border traders. Almost every bus driving north into Beitbridge will have dozens of bags that have to be cleared through customs. Each bag may be modest in size, but add a day’s total and there are a surprising number of tonnes of South African goods going north. Indeed there are a fair number of businesses in Limpopo Province that specialise in welcoming foreign shoppers, ensuring that they have the desired goods in stock at fair prices. They see foreign customers as an asset, not as people who should be attacked and their buses stoned.

North of the river we all expect South African trucks, and there are plenty moving north, to be driven by South Africans and we treat these foreign drivers decently and protect them from criminals in exactly the same way we protect our own. In fact one of the reasons the present Zimbabwean Government changed the way police enforce traffic laws was that foreign businesses and their drivers added their complaints to the chorus of Zimbabweans angry about corruption and near corruption.

But if businesses to the north of South Africa cannot get their South African goods delivered, they will stop buying. And if they cannot get their goods to South African ports then Dar es Salaam, Beira, Maputo and Walvis Bay are going to have to hire more staff at their ports while workforces are cut at the South African ports. This will have an effect on the economies of Southern Africa, with South Africa being the main loser, both in terms of production and employment.

A longer term danger is that consumers in the rest of Africa will at least start thinking when they look at goods labelled “Made in South Africa” or “Proudly South African”. And if they are shopping soon after seeing television footage of xenophobia or reading about it in the paper being sold next to these South African goods they might want to take a second look at the similar product from Zambia, Zimbabwe, Kenya or Nigeria.

South Africa has a positive balance of trade with most of sub-Saharan Africa and the continent does provide a major market for Africa’s most advanced economy as well as one of its largest. But there are others eager and willing to fill the gaps and turning your end customers against your country is not going to create more employment south of the Limpopo, rather the reverse.

Political rhetoric in South Africa has become more anti-immigrant, with some politicians and parties lifting chunks of dubious speeches from the more right-wing elements in North America, Britain and Europe. And there are also those far-out elements who appear to have taken their ideas from Mein Kampf or the worse of the pro-apartheid writings.

A refusal to examine statistics does not help. The best figures suggest that around 4 percent of South African residents are foreigners, and almost certainly that means around 4 percent of criminals are foreigners, simply because foreigners are neither more likely nor, regrettably, less likely to be criminals. But with that small percentage South African police should have little problem catching them, if for no other reason that they are less able to blend into the general population.

And Africans in other countries are not going to raise a finger if the police do arrest foreign criminals and if South African courts convict them. In fact if South Africa wanted to implement a growing number of conventions that allow foreign felons to be deported to their country of origin where they will serve their sentence in a local jail, we would imagine most African countries would go along with this deal and would fulfil their obligations by keeping the felon incarcerated for the term set.

There are possibly a higher percentage of illegals among the foreign population, but these people are doing the jobs that few South Africans want or are even willing to consider. If more South African unemployed were ready to shovel manure on Limpopo farms, or make breakfast in hotels at 4am for hungry tourists, or till gardens at all hours, there would be fewer foreigners. And those tuckshops that are now being looted and burned would be South African if more South African families were ready to work 18 hours a day selling convenience goods at low margin. In other words, most foreigners in South Africa, as are most foreigners in most countries, are either exceptionally skilled and talented people doing work that cannot be done by a local or, and these are generally the majority, are doing the worst possible jobs because that is all that is available.

The final point that South Africans need to consider, in the business sense, is that generally Africans prefer to deal with Africans. But if those South of the Limpopo want to cut themselves off from the rest of the continent then others will develop the contacts and support systems to take the business. There have been a lot of comments about possible boycotts and about how ungrateful South Africans seem to be considering the suffering that the old apartheid regime inflicted on its neighbours as well as its own people, sponsoring rebels and armed dissidents. That is part of the human side that influences the business side. But more damaging is that the human element could easily severely damage the business side.

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