FO Explainers: Xenophobic Attacks in South Africa

FO Explainers: Xenophobic Attacks in South Africa

Martin Plaut, a journalist, academic and author, explains the wave of xenophobic violence unfolding across South Africa. As groups demand that undocumented migrants leave the country, he examines the economic pressures driving the unrest, the government’s response and the broader political forces he believes may be shaping the crisis. Economic hardship fuels rising violence Plaut describes South Africa’s xenophobic violence as an urgent national…

Consular officials under fire in South Africa

The Malawian Consulate in Johannesburg occupies a thatched building in Woodmead, a prosperous suburb in the city’s far north. It is usually a quiet, even sleepy place. All that changed on June 30. That was the day the ‘ultimatum’ expired. March and March, a nationalist vigilante group, had told all undocumented foreign nationals to leave South Africa by then—or else. On the day itself, huge marches in several cities across the country underscore…