There are within the Collins dictionary not more than 23 words that start with the letter ‘X’ and Xenophobia just happens to be one of them. The hatred and fear of foreigners or strangers or of their politics, culture and if I may add to the definition, their labour.
Now Xenophobia is nothing to joke about and the devastation and destruction one saw in the media left many of us with a chill down our spine to see the atrocities being perpetrated, including small and micro foreign national business owners, who are eking out an existence from their entrepreneurial spirit and yes also the ‘elephant in the room’ the foreign national employees.
Those employees who we all know about and even are aware of people and businesses who employ them, but have no work permits and have left the likes of economies that if the Honourable Robert Gabriel Mugabe can be believed is on the brink of economic boom with the assistance of China (possibly he has nor read of China’s current economic and stock woes).
Yes, South Africa needs to consider its own labour but it cannot ignore reality and the vast amount of productive foreign national workers cannot be ignored and heaven help us, but the Employment Services Act (ESA) which came into effect on 9 August 2015 certainly will not help matters either. Section 8 deals with the employment of foreign nationals and reiterates existing legislation that “an employer may not employ a foreign national within the territory of the Republic of South Africa prior to such foreign national producing an applicable and valid work permit, issued in terms of the Immigration Act.” But it gets better and makes provision that the Minister may make further regulations that “the employers must satisfy themselves that there are no other persons in the Republic with suitable skills to fill a vacancy, before recruiting a foreign national”, really? The problem is not with highly skilled high income earning employees but the poor blighters who are trying to hive off starvation. Criminalising those who are already here including the employers who are fuelling the economy is not going to solve the problem, it’s just going to upset our fellow SADC countries and make the foreign national workers more desperate.
The question begs to be asked, what would have happened in the pre-1993 era when most of our politicians and leaders where in exile together with many ordinary hard working citizens who found themselves out of their beloved South Africa, if the host counties had embarked on restrictive employment practices and xenophobic policies? Before our esteemed leaders eco the words of our counties favourite comedian Trevor Noah, “To soon, To soon”, let us bear in mind that generally the cry “to soon” indicates perfect timing.
Employees from other countries whether they have a work permit or not still have protection of South African labour law, so remember the law is still the law and employers can expose themselves to serious risk. Fortunately South Africa is not in the state Greece is in, in Greece, employment and unemployment are the same thing. You can get a job easily but the only problem is that no one pays you.