Xenophobia does not create employment, it destroys opportunities

The xenophobic violence in South Africa has raised some pertinent issues that many of the perpetrators may not have thought about.

Many of them complain that foreigners have taken their jobs and resulted in unfair competition in small businesses. They argue that the foreigners should go back home to create opportunities for locals. Thinking about many other cases of such violence you realised that this is a very simplistic argument.

Here we can invoke an African proverb which states that the visitor is usually the bearer of good news.

Many counties in Kenya have been organising investor attraction conferences. While this may appear to eye big investors even smaller ones like someone who sets up a shop is also targeted. The big one can build a mall and the small ones would rent shops in the shopping facility.

One of the best indicators of a successful business destination is the diversity of people in it. The US became successful because it was home to people from different parts of the world no wonder they call it the land of opportunities.

Targeting small investors with violence is similar to chasing all the small shop owners from a mall. The mall would soon lose attractiveness and the jobs would become even less. 

That scarcity mentality is a killer of progress and it reduces opportunities. Most people who live in cities are immigrants and if the native city dwellers decided to kick them out the city would be a shell of its former self. Many businesses would close, jobs lost and the city would start campaigns to attract visitors.

An immigrant rents a house that probably belongs to a local. By chasing one the local owner of the house loses business. A good example is a small town that decided to kick out all owners of restaurants who were not from the areas. They burnt their premises and killed a few of them. The locals became the only owners of restaurants in that town.

Many jobs were lost because the closed restaurants employed many locals. The remaining ones increased the price of basic items such as tea and snacks. The local dairy farmers lost the market for their milk. The town became less vibrant with even banks closing their branches.  

It is the high time we teach the young people about the value of diversity. In diversity there is strength in the collectiveness of everyone’s uniqueness.

It is very sad that someone can wake up and kill the neighbour who took him to hospital when he was ill just because the neighbour is an immigrant. My heart bleeds for the hard working foreigners who have been slaughtered in Durban’s xenophobic attacks.

In destination branding every city aims to be the best place to live or best in business or education among other aims.

Durban’s destination slogan, the warmest place to be has been thoroughly diluted by the recent attacks. The city’s tourism website talks of a place with an African flavour that captures your heart forever. I doubt if this is still the case at the moment. The saying that Rome was not built in a day applies, but the reputation of any city can be ruined in a day.

I will close with two quotes one by Martin Luther King, Jr, “An individual has not started living until he can rise above the narrow confines of his individualistic concerns to the broader concerns of all humanity.”  

The other one is from Maya Angelou, “It is time for parents to teach young people early on that in diversity there is beauty and there is strength.”

The writer is the marketing director of SBO Research. E-mail: [email protected], Twitter @bngahu